Formal complaint to Toronto Sun: Khadr editorial amounts to unlawful accusation

The following is a formal complaint submitted to the Toronto Sun on July 12, 2017.

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I am writing to submit a formal complaint regarding your July 9, 2017 editorial, Khadr payoff a slap in the face to all who serve, and will escalate the matter to the National NewsMedia Council should the results of the current complaint submission process prove unsatisfying.

In the editorial in question, you refer to Canadian citizen Omar Khadr as "(an) expert bombmaker and the killer of U.S. Army Sgt. Christopher Speer." Nowhere does this piece mention that there were no eyewitnesses to the alleged crime, that the process by which Mr. Khadr "confessed" to the killing of Sgt. Speer involved intense physical and psychological torture (including threats of anal rape), nor that the tribunal in front of which he was tried without legal representation has since been discredited. Furthermore, the editorial neglects to mention that Mr. Khadr, who was 15 at the time of Sgt. Speer’s killing, was indeed a child soldier according to internationally-recognized guidelines, for which the threshold is 18. Also, the editorial omits the fact that Mr. Khadr was raised by a family with direct jihadist involvement, and thus grew up subject to what can only be called brainwashing, which itself is psychological abuse of a different sort, and the key ingredient to the making of any child soldier. (Although he was 15 at the time of his alleged crime, one can only assume that his inculcation began much earlier, and that even if he wanted to leave such circumstances he likely didn’t feel like he had a lot of say in the matter.)

For the reasons stated above, and given that the way in which Mr. Khadr’s detention and tribunal were managed would have had the case thrown out in any other circumstances, I believe Postmedia is engaging in unlawful allegation by labelling Mr. Khadr a “killer” without any attempt at providing a reasonable context, and thus also misleading readers to unwittingly assume that Mr. Khadr was convicted in a process that would satisfy the threshold in our own domestic legal system.

I consider this conduct unlawful on Postmedia’s part, not to mention an abuse of its power as a nationwide media conglomerate, and as such I would like to see your organization issue a retraction of the above quoted passage, as well as a formal apology to Mr. Khadr and to readers who deserve more responsible behavior from their news media.