Omar Khadr in Bowden Institution at Eid al-Fitr 2014. Photo from www.freeomar.ca

Christian professors help Omar Khadr face life outside prison walls

“For me and my colleagues, this is the call God has put before us,” says Arlette Zinck.

EDMONTON, AB—Known by some as a wrongfully imprisoned child soldier and by others as a terrorist and murderer, Omar Khadr is free after nearly 13 years in prison.

The 28-year-old, accused of war crimes and imprisoned since he was 15, was released on bail on May 7. A group of Christian educators is applauding the decision, and continuing their quest to help Khadr upgrade his schooling.

Arlette Zinck, a professor at The King’s University in Edmonton, Alberta, first heard about Khadr’s story from his lawyer, Dennis Edney, when he came to speak at the university in 2008.

“He [Edney] spoke of a profoundly wounded teen with a fist-sized bullet hole in his chest who was nicknamed ‘buckshot’ by guards because of the many shrapnel wounds in his body, and made to carry heavy pails of water until his wounds wept,” Zinck writes in “Love Knows No Bounds: A Christian Response to the Omar Khadr Story,” a briefing written for the Chester Ronning Centre.

“He talked about sleep deprivation and the petty cruelties of cold temperatures. He told the students how, despite all of this, and in the context of years of conversations, he had never heard Omar Khadr speak an ill word about anyone.”

Zinck, along with many students and faculty at King’s, were moved to action by Khadr’s story. Some students organized events and rallies to support him, others began correspondence with him through his lawyer.

A small group of the faculty, including Zinck, made a curriculum for Khadr so he could study in prison. Khadr is still studying with them now while he is on bail.

Zinck tells ChristianWeek that Khadr plans to continue his education and they are just taking it one step at a time.

“He’s come a long way with his studies that he began as a student who left off at approximately Grade 8,” says Zinck.

Zinck sites Matthew 25 as a metaphor for their relationship with Khadr. “That’s the passage where you’re supposed to feed the hungry,” she says. “It doesn’t ask you to become judge and jury. It just says to be faithful and answer the call that God has put before you. For me and my colleagues, this is the call God has put before us.”

Zinck says it’s important for Christians to look at what’s happening in Canadian prisons, to think about corrections and our Christian understanding of reconciliation.

“All of us as Christians are pressed to use both our hearts and our minds when we engage with the world,” Zinck says. “So often it’s one or the other—rationalizing miserable ways of behaving or reacting emotionally instead of using a more thoughtful approach.

“A third way between the voices of culture is using a spirit of intelligent charity. This is an hour of history where we can pay attention to ways that revenge is used as a substitution for justice. I’m grateful for the experience working with Omar... I think we’re called to think carefully to think about the Christian perspective on corrections in Canada.”

Captured as a 15-year-old in Afghanistan, Khadr is the only juvenile tried for war crimes since the Second World War. A Canadian citizen, he was taken to Afghanistan by his father who had ties with al Qaeda. Among other charges, he is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier during a 2002 firefight.

After being picked up in the battlefield, terribly wounded, Khadr was held at Bagram, and subsequently at Guantanamo Bay, before being moved to Bath, Ontario, in 2012 and then to a maximum-security prison in Edmonton in 2013. He applied for bail while his Guantanamo conviction is appealed in the U.S.

In the CBC documentary titled Omar Khadr: Out of the Shadows, Khadr reflects on his time in Guantanamo and in prison, where he was interrogated and abused.

“This one guard in Guantanamo, he would go out of his way to just humiliate me, antagonize me...” says Khadr. “I thought, I wanna know who that guy is... so I can get back at him the next time I get an opportunity... And then I was thinking, you know... I’m giving him a place in myself that he doesn’t deserve. He’s not worth me caring about him.

“You can only imagine what this guy is going through. The thing is, if a person can inflict pain on another person and find pleasure in that... he’s probably living in worse pain than me. What he’s causing me is temporary... but he’s the one who’s gonna have to deal with his conscience later.”

While on bail, Khadr lives at his lawyer’s home.

“I try not to dwell on the past,” Khadr says. “It was either that or me engulfed in hate and misery and thinking of how bad life is. But that’s not going to get me anywhere. I try to think of things that will hopefully make my life and hopefully the life of people around me better.”

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