Omar Khadr faces $50M suit by blinded U.S. soldier, widow

[happyslug]

9. This case should be dismissed on Jurisdictional grounds.

The incident occurred in Afghanistan, Omar was captured in Afghanistan and transferred to Guantanamo, which the US Courts has ruled is NOT US territory. The Criminal Trial was held at Guantanamo and Omar is presently in Canada.

Thus the Court with Jurisdiction over this case are the Courts of Afghanistan. Given Oman "lived" in Cuba for 8 years while a prisoner at Guantanamo, a claim could be made Cuba had Jurisdiction over the case for they had personal jurisdiction over Oman (Through the US has refused to recognize such Cuban rights over Guantanamo). The third country with Jurisdiction is Canada. where Oman was born and where he is a Citizen AND where he will be sent when he gets out of Guantanamo.

Now, the US Congress and many states have passed laws giving their courts the right to hear cases of Terrorism. Some of these claims of Jurisdiction are restricted to countries where a US Court finds the Plaintiff can NOT expect to get justice. On the other hand most of these Laws leave it up to the courts to decide if they have jurisdiction over the case or not.

Jurisdiction can be attacked at any time during a Court case, even on appeal. At the same time, most courts will NOT rule that they do NOT have jurisdiction unless it is brought up in the litigation. What I suspect happened is the Plaintiff's filled suit and Omar did not file any defense and the Plaintiff won by "Default". i.e. they won because Oman did nothing, not that a court heard from both sides and ruled the Plaintiff were in the right.

In cases where jurisdiction is at issue, just default judgments are common. The Judgement is then attacked whenever it is used to go after the assets of the Defendant, in this case the assets of Omar. Since Oman is suing CANADA for not protecting him, any effort to collect on Omar will have to be heard where he lives or where he gets a favorable Judgment. In the case of Omar that is Canada.

Thus, if the Plaintiffs decide to transfer this Judgement to Canada, Canadian Courts will have to decide if Utah's courts had Jurisdiction to enter such a Judgement AND if it did, do Canadian Courts have to recognize that Judgement.

In my opinion, this Judgement is meaningless, it will be dismissed as a product of a court with NO Jurisdiction over the crime (which occurred in Afghanistan) or the person (who NEVER lived in Utah).