Abdurahman Ahmed Said Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was held as an enemy combatant in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba, after being detained in 2002 in Afghanistan under suspicion of connections to Al-Qaeda. He later claimed to have been an informant for the CIA. The agency declined to comment on this when asked for confirmation by the United States' PBS news program Frontline. He was released in the fall of 2003 and ultimately returned to Canada.
The Khadr family is an Egyptian-Canadian family noted for their ties to Osama bin Laden and connections to al-Qaeda.
Layne Morris is a retired American special forces operative. On July 27, 2002, he was wounded and blinded in one eye during a gunfight in Afghanistan that left American combat medic Christopher J. Speer dead, allegedly at the hands of the Canadian accused terrorist Omar Khadr.
"A piece of the hand grenade shrapnel cut the optic nerve, so I'm blind in one eye."
Christopher James Speer was a United States Army combat medic and an armed member of a special operations team who was killed during a skirmish in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002. Speer, who was not wearing a helmet at the time because the mission called for indigenous clothing, suffered a head wound from a grenade and succumbed to his injuries approximately two weeks later. Omar Khadr was charged and convicted of throwing the grenade that killed Speer.
Omar Ahmed Said Khadr is a Canadian who at the age of 15 was detained by the United States at Guantanamo Bay for ten years, during which he pleaded guilty to the murder of U.S. Army Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer and other charges. He later appealed his conviction, claiming that he falsely pleaded guilty so that he could return to Canada where he remained in custody for three additional years. Khadr sued the Canadian government for infringing his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; this lawsuit was settled in 2017 with a CA$10.5 million payment and an apology by the federal government.
Abdullah Ahmed Said Khadr is a Canadian citizen whose alleged ties to terrorism resulted in a protracted international legal issue. Born in Canada, he grew up in Pakistan. As the oldest son of Ahmed Khadr, who had ties to the Afghani Mujahideen, Abdullah was sent to the Khalden military training camp as a boy. As a young adult, he allegedly became an arms dealer, selling illicit weapons to militants involved in the War in Afghanistan and related conflicts.
William "Bill" C. Kuebler was an American lawyer and a Commander in the United States Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, assigned to the U.S. Navy Office of the Judge Advocate General, International and Operational Law Division. Kuebler was previously assigned to the Office of Military Commissions. Prior to the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, to overturn the then current version of the Guantanamo military commissions on constitutional grounds, Kuebler was detailed to defend Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi. Al Sharbi had insisted on representing himself and Kuebler refused superior orders to act as his lawyer.
Dennis Edney is a Canadian defence lawyer based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Originally from Dundee, Scotland, he is noted for his involvement in high-profile cases, including Brian Mills, R. v. Trang, as defence attorney for Abdullah and Omar Khadr, who were captured in the War on Terror, for Fahim Ahmad, and for representing the entire Khadr family. He also represented Canadian Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy charged in the US with plotting to carry out mass shootings of civilians at concerts, to bomb New York Times Square, and to bomb the city's subway system.
Jim Gould was an intelligence officer who served as a deputy at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Michelle Shephard is an independent investigative reporter, author and filmmaker. She has been awarded the Michener Award for public service journalism and won Canada's top newspaper prize, the National Newspaper Award, three times. In 2011, she was an associate producer on a documentary called Under Fire: Journalists in Combat. She produced the National Film Board documentary, Prisoners of the Absurd, which premiered at Amsterdam's film festival in 2014. Shephard also co-directed a film based on her book about Omar Khadr, Guantanamo's Child, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2015.
Joshua R. Claus is a former member of the United States Army, whose unit was present at both Iraq's Abu Ghraib and at the Bagram Theater Detention Facility in Afghanistan, and was the first interrogator of Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr. In 2005, he was found guilty of maltreatment and assault against an Afghanistan detainee who later died.
A Canadian captured by American forces in Afghanistan at the age of 15, Omar Khadr is currently on interim release from prison in Canada pending an appeal of his war-crimes conviction before a military commission in Guantanamo Bay. Formerly the only Western citizen remaining in Guantanamo, Khadr is unique in that Canada refused to seek extradition or repatriation despite the urgings of Amnesty International, the Canadian Bar Association and other prominent organisations. His lawyer Dennis Edney has summarised the differential response towards Khadr stating that "one of the problems" with defending the youth is that he's a member of the Khadr family rather than "a Smith or an Arar"
Khalid Abdullah is a Sudanese-Egyptian who was the fiancé of Canadian Zaynab Khadr, and a suspect in the 1996 attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan.
Shahgai is a region in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Jami Mosque is a mosque in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located just east of High Park, it is the oldest Canadian Islamic centre in the city and dubbed "the mother of all the mosques in Toronto".
You Don't Like The Truth: Four Days Inside Guantanamo is a 2010 documentary. The film focuses on the recorded interrogations of Canadian child soldier Omar Khadr, by Canadian intelligence personnel that took place over four days from February 13–16, 2003 while he was held at Guantanamo. It presents these with observations by his lawyers and former cell mates from the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and Guantanamo Bay detention camps.
Andy Worthington is a British historian, investigative journalist, and film director. He has published three books, two on Stonehenge and one on the war on terror, been published in numerous publications and directed documentary films. Articles by Worthington have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, AlterNet, ZNet, the Future of Freedom Foundation and Amnesty International, and Qatar-based Al Jazeera. He has appeared on television with Iran-based Press TV In 2008, he began writing articles for Cageprisoners, and became its Senior Researcher in June 2010.
The 40th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 10 to 20 September 2015. On 28 July 2015 the first wave of films to be screened at the Festival was announced. Jean-Marc Vallée's Demolition starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts was the opening night film; Mr. Right by Paco Cabezas was the closing night film.
In October 2012, Canadian-American couple Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman were kidnapped in the Maidan Wardak Province of Afghanistan while on a trip through Central and South Asia. They were held by the Haqqani network until October 2017 when they were rescued by Pakistani forces in Kurram Agency, Pakistan. During their captivity, Coleman gave birth to three children.
World Famous Gopher Hole Museum is a 2015 Canadian short documentary film directed by Chelsea McMullan and Douglas Nayler. The film centres on the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum in Torrington, Alberta, a museum in which stuffed gophers are posed in various anthropomorphic situations.
