I am still trying vainly to understand why he was not simply a prisoner of war instead of being charged as he was.  But that is just me.

Please don't exclude Canada's administrative collusion in this travesty.

Gord, I can't understand why he is not considered a "child soldier"... At this point, neither our government nor the U.S. can afford to go there or they will be incontrovertibly seen as child torturers, abusers and persecutors; it's okay to treat terrorists like that apparently... and the Afghanistan war might look outrageously ill-considered... even wrong.

There has been a dramatic change in the world that we are little aware of through our press. The US is now seen as Nazi Germany - but more ruthless and on a broader scale. We Canadians are now playing the role of Franco's Spain - and worse.

I guess what we may never know is; did he throw the grenade, or was he told that if he didn't admit to throwing it, he'd be in jail for the rest of his life.

One can almost sense that the Americans wanted his head at all costs. 

Think Conrad Black.  Down there, six years.  Up here, a slap on the wrist and a don't be so sloppy next time.

IT

Russ

What parts of the world see the US as Nazi Germany?  

I don't know about the "Nazi Germany" parallel but I do know many people in Europe and the Pacific who believe the U.S. is expansionist, brutal, intolerant, greedy, aggressive, repressive and wrong... and I believe there are many in Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East who'd agree.

There's evidence for it if you cruise some of the independent foreign new media, and -- better still -- is you have friends in these places or go there and get alongside ordinary people (as I've been privileged to do in Europe and the Pacific). The U.S. and most Canadians are ignorant, I believe, of the level of civilian deaths, and needless assaults, inflicted by the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the complexities of issues (and the barbaric nature of conflict) in the Middle East more generally. There is much more of this sort of news coverage in Asia and Europe. We also hear less about the American militarisation of space, and the U.S. capacity to target perceived enemies from orbiting satellites, something which adds to the negative picture many have of the U.S.

The so-called War on Terror is widely regarded as a fudge... cover for the pursuit of American strategic and  resource acquisition goals.

You think the war on terror is fake?  Some bombs from Yemen were discovered just the other day on UPS cargo planes.  And a few months ago some Canadians were arrested on terrorism related charges.   I'm very thankful that the intelligence people here and in US and Europe seem to have got better at detecting terror.  There really are people out there who want to kill us--it is not a joke you know. 

As for the war in Afghanistan--remember the US was attacked first.  However the war seems hopeless now and I think the west should withdraw.  I feel bad for the people there who don't want to live under the Taliban, though.  It is not a very nice place. 

Mely - it was not Afghanstan who attacked the World Trade Center, if that is what you are referring to.

Well it was people living in Afghanistan. 

Mely:

Mohamed Atta (usually credited with leadership of the 9é11 hijackers) was from Egypt; Moqed, Ahmed & Manza al-Ghamdi, al-Nami, al-Haznawi and al-Shehhi were all Saudis, Jarra was from Lebanon, Bahaji was German (his dad was Moroccan)... but there were some Al Qaeda training camps in the fastnesses of Afghanistan.

Oddly, a number of the Bin Laden family were given instant special clearance after the 9/11 attacks to fly out of the U.S.... they had oil business links with the Bush family. The Bin Ladens are a rich Saudi family, close to the Saudi royalty. Their Saudi Binladin Group, a global equity management and construction conglomerate, grosses 5 billion U.S. dollars a year and has holdings in Microsoft and Boeing.

The Taliban are, broadly speaking, the same folk who fought the Soviets and descendants of those who, before that, fought the British... their homeland has the misfortune to be of considerable East-West strategic importance.

Al Qaeda is a newer jihadist group that originated with a lot of U.S. aid to fight the Soviets.

Most of these people want their independence from foreign interventionists... radical Islam provides a uniting rationale to do this.

And think on this: if a foreign army occupied your country... your job, your home were gone and you were struggling to feed yourself and those you love, and this army was arresting and torturing members of your family and community, and was firing depleted uranium munitions into your community so that your grandchildren were being born with horrifying deformities, and bombing your friends' and/or family's communities killing your brothers, sisters, parents or children, and those of your friends... at what point would you get angry enough to pick up a weapon?

Would you blame those who did and report them to this army of occupation?

The thing that struck me about the sentence the jury handed out (40 years or so?) was that they said they wanted to send a message to other terrorists that the US would not tolerate such actions.......as if the average terrorists gives a flying fig about jail sentences in the US. Sheesh. Omar Kadhr is a pawn.

I hope they don't ship him back to Canada where our taxpayers have to pay for upkeep on his sorry carcass.  He deserves the US justice system.

 T.Rex... if you're a Canadian citizen, should you not expect a measure of protection from Canada (that's certainly the way most citizenships work)?

what killed me in all of it was that the prosecution seemed to be trying to portray Omar Kadhr as some kind of terrorist mastermind. He was 15. He couldn't get his own passport. He couldn't get his own plane ticket to anywhere. He was there because his father put him there. He should never have been tried. He was a child.

US was punishing Omar Khadr to cover their own asses.  Their soldiers had shot a child in the back.  They had to portray him as a terrorist bent on murder, rather than a frightened wounded child trying to protect himself.   The longer they kept him the more of an international embarassment to them he became, and the more important to justify their actions by proving he was dangerous. 

And, no doubt, Canada could have eased their conscious and taken him off their hands by applying to have him returned to Canada for trial.  But Canada did nothing to protect a Canadian citizen unjustly imprisoned, and tortured, in an illegal prison operated by a foreign government. 

We, along with the US, should hang our heads in shame.

Now, the best we can do would be to bring Omar home and try to rehibilitate him.  His childhood is gone.  But maybe we can help him to get an education and prepare for some type of career - I understand he would like to be a medic.    Letting him serve eight more years in a US prison is unthinkable.  What sort of a man do we think would walk out. 

One of the strangest things is that I would say Canadian authorities had a more legitimate case to try.  Theoretically they could have built a case of treason since Omar (a Canadian Citizen) was actively fighting in a military action in which Canadian forces were involved but on the opposing side.

By any historic definition that is treasonous.  Would the case have been proven in court?  Who knows.  But there was a case to be made.  But that would have to be a Canadian trial, not a US military trial (the outcome of which was never really in doubt).  And that case would have held more water IMO than the charges he was actually tried for.  (Unless of course any person involved in a military action who takes a life is going to be charged with murder)

One of the strangest things is that I would say Canadian authorities had a more legitimate case to try.  Theoretically they could have built a case of treason since Omar (a Canadian Citizen) was actively fighting in a military action in which Canadian forces were involved but on the opposing side.

By any historic definition that is treasonous.  Would the case have been proven in court?  Who knows.  But there was a case to be made.  But that would have to be a Canadian trial, not a US military trial (the outcome of which was never really in doubt).  And that case would have held more water IMO than the charges he was actually tried for.  (Unless of course any person involved in a military action who takes a life is going to be charged with murder)

mely. Try to understand. The US has a long history of \terrorism and brutality. The same men who  talked about all being born equal kept slaves. It was one of the most brutal states in the history of slavery, taking at least thirty million lives - and that was before thre real  brutality of life on the plantation. The expansion of the US was built one deliberate genocide of native peoples. There is no count of how many million were killed. The killing began with the earliest English settlement and continued until only a little more than a century ago. The US has stolen territory from Mexico. It has used terrorism and dictatorship  and murder to keep  central america a source of cheap labour. Haiti is poor because the US wants it poor as a source of cheap labour. Same with Guatemala. The  US throughout its history has been extraordinarily aggresseve and brutal, invading other countries over a hundred and seventy times - including t wice for Canada.

Who see the US as brutal? Most of the world does. With good reason. It has killed at least five million people since 1950. It has impoverished many millions more. It has terroriized on a Scale exceeded only by Mao and Stalin. Canada's reputation around the world is in the toilet - because we are seen, correctly as an accomplice of the US.

Yes. Terrorism does exist. The world's leading  terrorist, by far, is the US. read some history, mely.  Look around at what's happening in t he real world. then we'll talk.

MikeP, stop bringing history into the rhetoric!

While my memory for things like where did I put my keys is gone, I still remember, sometime in the 80's, reading and interpreting an American general's glee at stating "Afghanistan is Russia's Vietnam".  hmmm, I wonder if that general is still with the US army.

LB

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.

     Jeane Kirkpatrick, US Ambassador to the UN, 1979

You're right, Muskie... history makes the current state of the world impossible to understand, a through-the-mirror experience of somersaulting values, moral amnesia and off-top-of-the-head opportunism... and to hell with anything that gets in the way of the flavour of the day. Aaaah... rhetoric's best for everyone...

I just read in the local paper that only 51 percent of Canadians think the Omar Khadr should be brought back to Canada to serve all or most of his sentence.  I find that hard to believe.  But then I'm one that finds it hard to believe that we didn't do everything possible to bring him home eight years ago when he was first shot, tortured and put in prison by the Americans.  Then we would have had a better chance at rehibilitation. 

Come home he will - the sooner the better.  Because after his eight year sentence the Americans will release him from their illegal prison in Cuba and deport him immediately to Canada - and we will have to deal with him then.  

Look around what is happening in the real world, Graeme.  The Americans are being overrun by Mexicans.  They don't need or want any more cheap labour.  The unemployment rate is 9.6%.  In California the unemployment rate is over 12%.   The state of California is going broke partly because there are so many illegal Mexicans who don't pay taxes, but require schools and emergency health care. 

I just don't agree with your view of America.  If America is so hated then why are so many people from all over the world anxious to live there?   

If China were the world's super power do you think things would be any better?   I think things would be a lot worse.  The Internet would be censured all over the world, for one thing.  China is selling arms to African countries at a great rate.  Anything to make a buck, I guess.  They are also setting up a lot of businesses in Africa--colonizing it, basically.  They seem to treat the Africans about the same way Europeans treated them a few hundred years ago.  I guess China is going through its Industrial Revolution stage...1000's dying in coal mines, terrible pollution, exploiting aboriginal people, and so forth. 

You speak of the historical evil of slavery in the US.  Why don't you address the present day slavery that is going on in many parts of the world such as Saudi Arabia.   A member of the Saudi royal family was recently convicted of murder in London, England.  He made the mistake of murdering his black  "servant" in Britain, which still seems to have a working legal system.   He would have never been charged with murder if it had happened in Saudi Arabia.  However, if he ever gets back to Saudi Arabia he might (according to his lawyers) face the death penalty for being gay. 

Although I understand the legal concepts the court was applying to justify trial of Kadr for a war crime I am mystified that the U.S. was prepared to overlook the diminished responsibility of Kadr because he was 15 years old (at the time the act was committed) and had, in fact, been in the camps in Afghanistan since the age of 13.  No American child could have been subjected to such treatment or found guilty in similar circumstances in any U.S. court.

I am particularly saddened that the U.S. legal system (which has produced lots of great law and great jurists) has besmirched itself with this travesty.  I feel saddened, too, at the vengeful, retributive nature of the sentence which does not reflect well on the U.S. legal system or on the American people.   

I am somewhat gladdened that the actual result (flowing from the plea deal) is more in line with what a fairer process that would normally also take into consideration the issue of rehabilitation might have arrived at with regard to sentence.  The dichotomy between the plea deal and the sentence given by the panel (being the dichotomy of what was put out for public consumption and what was actually done) speaks I think to the fact that the prosecutors were playing to the mob (which judging by these midterm elections now just returning their vote counts, is a very large and important constituency in the U.S.) while following more humane and accepted precepts when making the plea deal.  

In short, the trial and subsequent sentencing was more a political show trial than a true legal one. 

Finally, I was most saddened that in a country full of people who pride themselves in being Christians that it was the Muslim child/man who attempted to meet his accusers on a more human level and descended to apologize and ask forgiveness while those who came from a Christian heritage (including the widow who has now had lots of time to grieve) rejected the apology and threw the apology back in his teeth arguing instead for vengeance and retribution against someone who had acted as a child and would in their own country could not have been held criminally responsible. 

mely, you are soaked in American myths.

for a start, \i am quite aware Chinese rule would be no better - just as British rule was no better for most people, or French rule, etc. My point is not Americans are in some way genetic cruel. My point is that, despite the myths of their history, Americans have behaved exactly as all past empires have. The US does not fight countries to bring them democracy. That's  myth. make a list of all the countries the US has brought democracy to since 1875. You will find it an amazingly short list. Britain, as it ran out of power to dominate, brought democracy to more countires than the US did. And it did so only because it had no choice.

I know the Saudis keep slaves. That "Royal" family was put in power by the US and Britain. They deliberately avoided making it a democracy. At their worst, the Saudis have been sweethearts to their slaves compared to,, say, George Washington. And the American killed as many slaves as Mao killed Chinese.

The US needs the cheap labour IN Haiti for factories and farming estates. The Haitians at three dollars a day and with no social services or education are far, far cheaper than the cheapest of Mexicans.

The world is not fleeing to the US.  Far more are fleeing to Europe which is (until recently) the region offering far the best chances of advancement. America lost status as the land of hope over a generation ago. Europeans stopped fleeing to America before 1960.

As in the US news media (which many Canadians follow), the campaign to condemn moslems as evil has made an impact in Canada.

If anybody reading this feels Omar Khadr should be punished (without any solid evidence he did anything, and despite his age), tell me first what you would do to George Bush and Tony Blair who were over 15 when they deliberately killed over a million peopllel - then we'll talk.

Further to my post above, I have to add something my brother mentioned to me when we were discussing this.  He said, "They've worked it out like an episode of South Park.  They want to "Blame Canada".   They plan on maintaining that they wanted to give him 40 years and that the Canadians who are soft on terrorism let him out of jail early."  

 Mely: in another thread, you'll see the U.S. has just committed to a very large arms sale to the Saudis. The U.S. and the Saudis are on the same page because the U.S. and U.K. wrote the book...

Well Mely the Americans both want and need that cheap labour.  When the recession hit it hit the middle class and the entrepreneurial class it didn't put the nanny's and grape pickers out of work.  Those jobs were already being done by Mexicans because Californians don't want to do them, recession or no recession.  As that comedian on the Daily Show said in his testimony to congress ... "I don't mind picking fruit.  It's just that the soil they plant the fruit in is really really close to the ground..."  (or words to that effect).  To blame California's financial condition on Mexicans who don't pay taxes is absurd.  The Mexicans are earning at or below minimum wage.  Even if they were paying taxes they wouldn't pay much.  Actually the problem is that the rich ... Californians ... citizens of the U.S. ... don't pay enough taxes.  Taxes are set too low and the state government hasn't got the integrity to raise them (and the citizenry apparently doesn't possess the integrity to allow them).  It really is beyond the pale to be blaming the financial distress of a rich state like California (whose economy is, by the way bigger than the economy of Canada) on the poorest of the poor.

The Californians who hire "illegals" undoubtedly justify the low wages they pay on the basis that the payments are cash and that they will not be taxed which means that a smaller hourly rate for a Mexican rationalized as being the same as a higher rate for an American.   Further, these jobs wouldn't even exist if it were considered necessary to pay a fair wage.  

Well, for whatever reason, California is going broke.  There are a lot of poor people living there.  A lot of the more well to do people have moved away.  The housing bubble burst and lots of people have been foreclosed on or owe more than their homes are worth.

Maybe they will pass Prop. 19 to legalize mj so they can start collecting tax on it.  The results are not in yet, as far as I know. 

Edit to add:  Looks like Prop 19 went down to defeat 54% to 46%.  Oh well.

While I normally agree with everything Qwerty ever writes, I quibble with this.  Even if Omar had been an "American" child he would have faced a prison term of Life Without Parole and he would have served his sentence in an adult prison.....

This report is the first ever national analysis of life without parole sentences for children. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have discovered that there are currently at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States who have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they committed as children. 

[...]

The public may believe that children who receive life without parole sentences are “super-predators” with long records of vicious crimes. In fact, an estimated 59 percent received the sentence for their first-ever criminal conviction. Sixteen percent were between thirteen and fifteen years old at the time they committed their crimes. While the vast majority were convicted of murder, an estimated 26 percent were convicted of felony murder in which the teen participated in a robbery or burglary during which a co-participant committed murder, without the knowledge or intent of the teen. Racial disparities are marked. Nationwide, the estimated rate at which black youth receive life without parole sentences (6.6 per 10,000) is ten times greater than the rate for white youth (0.6 per 10,000).

[...]

The dramatic increase in the imposition of life without parole sentences on child offenders in the United States is, at least in part, a consequence of widespread changes in U.S. criminal justice policies that gathered momentum in the last decades of the twentieth century. Responding to increases in crime and realizing the political advantages of promoting tough law and order policies, state and federal legislators steadily increased the length of prison sentences for different crimes and expanded the types of offenders facing prison sentences. They also promoted adult trials for child offenders by lowering the minimum age for criminal court jurisdiction, authorizing automatic transfers from juvenile to adult courts, and increasing the authority of prosecutors to file charges against children directly in criminal court rather than proceeding in the juvenile justice system. The United States thus abandoned its commitment to a juvenile justice system and the youth rehabilitation principles embedded in it.

“Adult time for adult crime” may be a catchy phrase, but it reflects a poor understanding of criminal justice principles. If the punishment is to fit the crime, both the nature of the offense and the culpability or moral responsibility of the offender must be taken into account.

     Amnesty International, The Rest of Their Lives:  Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States, 2005

The trend according to the above report is the numbers of youths sentenced to LWP is increasing even though the numbers of youths committing crimes has dropped.  Sentencing has become harsher, not crime has increased.

Despite the fact that out 194 countries, only the US and Somalia have refused to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids imprisoning persons under the age of 18 for life, I do not believe that this makes American (or Somalian) societies different than those who have ratified it.  In my ever so humble opinion, harsh punishment of children reflects on the adult society's incapacity to accept responsibility for the environment it creates.  It is much easier for adults to blame and punish the child than to acknowledge adult culpability in the abandonment and neglect of our children.  Instead society locks those children behind concrete and steel and forgets them....

"She was one of those kids that wanted to do the piano lessons and baseball and all that—but we didn’t have the money. I drank up all the money . [...]She is a mature adult now.  My daughter–it’s like she sacrificed herself to wake me up. . . . Well I lost her. She gets jealous when she hears about what I do now with the other kids, but she’s happy for them too.”

      Case Study: Alexis V. (arrested at 14, serving LWP)

One thing that has come out about Omar is that he had a choice in going.  He had the opportunity to be with other family members.

Not sure how legitamet that is but oen pundit I listened too spoke of precident

If they say"poor Omar, his father raised him to be that way"  then what about poor old drug dealer whose father raised him that was.  What about poor old bully whose father raised him that way.  What about poor old wife abuser whose father taught him that.

I don't believe he was innocent and was surprised to hear the harse condemnation from the psychiatrist.

I wonder if any of you who are so concerned about him would have felt different if he had throw grenades at Canadians or if his road side bombs were linked to Canadian deaths?

I am more concerned with Ashley Smith who was in prison for a very minor reason, had obvious mental issues, was kept more or less in sollitary for 11 months and died.

She should get your sympathy, not someone who was trying to kill our soldiers and by all accounts still feels that way

 I stand corrected LB.  I mistakenly believed that U.S. law was approximately the same as our own as about as far evolved.  Holy Mackeral!  How barbaric!

Personally I think a more interesting question is - what would you have done at the age of 13 or 14?  Who would you have obeyed your father or yourself?

And a smile at Qwerty - I am off today to that barbarous land for I can not resists its siren call of sunshine, Santa Fe art and fresh guacamole....

LB - there but the grace of my father go I

The eye that mocks a father
And scorns a mother,
The ravens of the valley will pick it out,
And the young eagles will eat it.

     Proverbs 30:17 NASB

 lastpointe - they are two different (both sad) cases and I don't know why they both can't have our sympathy.  Our hearts are big enough ... I hope.

 Yeah LB its a bitch eh?  Much as I hate to admit it I like going to the U.S. myself.  There is a lot that is good there.  I marvel at how people who are so hospitable when you meet them one at a time can be so intemperate and hard when they act as a group.  Last night's election is a case in point ...

Do we let george bush off for murdering a million because his father raised him that way? Apparently so.

Always nice to see a Christian viewpoint.

The question lp, is not WHO hed killed (when it's not proven he killed anybody at all.) The point is he did whatever he did at the age of 15. It is ILLEGAL (as well as unChristian) to try a fifteen year old as an adult.

And why would be be forgiving? He saw people who looked him being shot down because they looked like him. He saw women and children being killed. (There were hours of bombing first, remember?  He was badly wounded himself. , then tortured while wounded.  Then jailed illegally and tortured illegally for years. What would you expect him to do - sing God Bless America?

Hell, why should be apologize?

About the juveniles sentenced for life--I wish we would do that in Canada sometimes.  For example for these two:

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Teens+show+remorse+Proctor+murder/3739178/story.html

This murder happened  just a few miles from where my daughter and grandchildren live.  If you bleeding-hearts think these monsters should be let out of prison in 6 years and have their identities shielded so we don't know what they look like or what their names are, then we should send them to live in your town.

 Well Mely I checked the article.  Lots of gruesome detail.  No mention of release in 6 years though.  I did see that unlike you the court is going to find out whether the defendants are insane before passing sentence.  

qwerty, they haven't been sentenced yet.  The prosecutor has requested that they be sentenced as adults, so hopefully that will happen.  But I wouldn't bet the rent.  If they are sentenced as juveniles the maximum time they can incarcerated is 6 years, or so I have read.

Heaven help us if they are found insane.  In that case they will be back out on the street in  less than 6 years and we just have to pray they don't go off their meds.  A guy up in Fort St John killed two people with a ball peen hammer (the voices told him to do it).  In less than 5 years he was out on day passes.  I don't doubt he is mentally ill.  I just think we need a secure place where criminally insane people can be kept humanely and indefinitely.  We don't have that, and these people are often let out within a few years.  I think this is a danger to society. 

Mely, you need to learn more about the system and what happens when people are found criminally insane. I know the family of the man from Fort St. John, and have met him. He does indeed have a diagnosed mental illness. When he is receiving proper medical care he is no threat at all. When he is let out on day passes, he will have some supervision. Yes, he did walk away for a bit there a year or two ago, and came back to the hospital. He will likely stay in that facility for many years, if not the rest of his life. He is a classic example of how the mental health system is flawed. He is someone that if he had gotten the PROPER treatment, he would not have gotten to the stage where he commited those murders. It was a tragedy on so many levels, not just for those who were killed.

As for those teens in Victoria, they are not typical young offenders. From what I have seen, they probably ought to be tried as adults, at least the 18 year old. This was a particularly gruesome crime, and I doubt they are mentally ill......perhaps a personality disorder such as psychopaths. If that is the case, then prison is the best place for them.

We cannot use blanket responses for all things. The world is not black and white. Oh how it would be nice if life were as simple as those wanting black and white solutions would suggest. The man in Fort St John is entirely different from the young men who killed Ms. Proctor. Prison is not the solution to our social problems. It is certainly appropriate in some cases, not all.

 Those who are found to be insane face an indefinite period of incarceration because they can be held behind bars until they are found to be no longer in need of treatment ... which may be never.  There is no provision or possibility of parole or early release for any reason.

 Many of the people in prison are mentally ill; many have HCV, HIV, addictions and health issues, other contract them while they are in prison (turning a sentence of incarceration into one of slow death). Aboriginal and poor people are disproportionately represented, even by international standards...

Our prison sytem and our mental health system BOTH need an overall overhaul... there are massive needs for research, reform and rehabilitative measures. We could save millions if we got this system function as it should instead of building more prisons, lengthening sentences and banging more people up.

It seems rather risky to continue letting him out on day passes.  He might walk away and just disappear.  If that were to happen he would stop recieving treatment and might kill again. 

I agree the mental health system is seriously flawed.  It seems as if a lot of mentally ill people live on the streets and eat out of dumpsters.  I guess this is what happens when you close most of the mental hospitals to save money, and turn sick people out to fend for themselves.

Here is another very tragic case that happened in a town near where I live:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/bc-dad-found-guilty-but-not...

People were very angry when Schoenburg was found not criminally repsonsible.  I sure hope they don't start letting him out on day passes, but it will probably happen.  Same with the infamous Greyhound bus beheader. 

Then just a few weeks ago a man in my town walked away from the hospital (were his family had taken him for treatment for his mental illness, earlier in the day.) and severly beat a Roman Catholic bishop who anwered the door of the rectory and let him in.  The bishop almost died and is still in hospital, probably with brain damage.  There is no doubt the offender is mentally ill.  He hasn't been tried yet. 

Their trial is finished.  They pleaded guilty.  They were tried as juveniles, but may be sentenced as adults.  The sentencing isn't until March.  Apparently the 16 year old was the master mind behind the plot, and the 18 year old just went along with it.   The 16 year old's father is in prison, but the 18 year old came from what appears to be a normal family.  His parents are both professionals.  

Mely - in this town we are investigating a cop who beat a man for 'causing a disturbance at a bar' so badly that he was hospitalized and may be affected  with back problems for life.  Should that cop be locked up for life?   Oh yes, there is no evidence, either from eye witnesses or on a video taken by a bystander who didn't know the victim, that the person was resisting arrest, or even that he had been informed that he was being arrested. 

Schoenburg has schizophrenia, as does the man who beheaded the man on the Greyhound. People with schizophrenia can live quite productive lives if they have the proper treatment. The illness is one that is difficult for them on so many levels. As for Terry Giesbrecht from FSJ, he will pose very little risk on day passes. He would actually do well in a supported independent living situation where he can hold a job somewhere. That may be the case for the other two as well. I imagine if Terry were to leave the facility where he is, he would either come back reasonably soon, or would be easily found. There is no reason for him or likely the other two to be locked up in an institution forever.

Like it or not, people with mental illness are part of our society and are all around us. They are not demons to be locked up. Yes, they, make us feel uncomfortable with their odd behaviours. Yes, there is some risk for violence, but it is rare. Generally they are more of a risk to themselves or are more vulnerable than they are a danger to others.

Some of them, such Vince Li  and Allan Schoenborn,  ARE demons and should be locked up permanently.   If either of them are ever let out it will prove that the people making such decisions are the craziest ones of all.

Wow, so the fact that they have a treatable illness means nothing? Not that they would ever be totally free or anything........

 Demons?  You would use this word, Mely, to describe mentally ill persons?  My God, Mely!  Do you know how you sound?  It is monstrous!  

The persons you refer to are persons who, because they are not even capable of understanding the nature and quality of their acts cannot be held criminally responsible.  In other words they are innocent people who are not criminals.  A criminal is a person who commits a guilty act (an act which he knew or ought to have known was wrong) and does so with a guilty intention (an actual intention to do a wrong act).  In the cases you cite, neither ingredient exists.  It is likely that if these people had realized what they were doing they would not have done it.  

What you are suggesting is like suggesting that our society should mete out the death penalty to persons who jaywalk while sleepwalking.  These persons are like dreamers who  upon waking (when and if they are restored to a less disturbed state) find that they are accused of things of which they have no recollection; things which were enacted in another reality which is not ours.  

Imagine, if you will, that you had a dream in which it was absolutely necessary and justified to kill someone ... perhaps to protect yourself or a loved one in a life and death situation ... perhaps in a war ... and then upon waking the police come and arrest you because of what happened in that dream that you can no longer really recall.  Later as you wait locked up and in a confused state, you learn that there is a lynch mob from the internet chat sites who, the blood lust upon them, are  outside baying for your blood, torches in hand.  This is the experience of Mr. Li and Mr. Schoenborn.  

And the mob?  Well Mely, ... just to maximize the horror ... imagine that they all look and dress the same  ... the same hair ... the same outfit ... the same angry expression ... the same burning eyes glinting in the firelight ... the same pitchforks ... the same battered fedoras ... the same torches ... and all of them have the same face ... and that face would be exactly the same as the face of ... gasp ... Mely.

What makes a demon demonic Mely is that unlike Li and Schoenborn, demons know what they are doing and they know they are doing wrong.  

Beautifully expressed Qwerty.