Michelle Shephard, National Security Reporter for The Toronto Star, and author of “Guantanamo’s Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr” (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) will be a guest speaker at the Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival on March 3rd when she will introduce Taxi to the Dark Side director Alex Gibney.
The Oscar-nominated Taxi to the Dark Side has been lauded as a “chilling indictment” on the use of torture in the “war on terror.”
Toronto-born Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of 15 after a firefight with U.S. forces. The Pentagon has charged Khadr with five war crimes, including the murder of Christopher Speer, a Delta Force soldier and medic who died 10 days after the firefight from grenade wounds.
Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch along with Amnesty International, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and Human Rights First sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to formally request that the United States either try Mr. Khadr under juvenile justice rules or send him back to Canada.
Mr. Khadr is the only Westerner still held in Guantanamo Bay, and the U.S. administration has previously indicated that even his acquittal in a military court may not necessarily mean he would be released.
