Dennis Edney, the lawyer who played a key role in securing the release of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr, has died at the age of 77.
Edney suffered from dementia and died Saturday, according to an obituary published in the Edmonton Journal.
The soccer player turned lawyer has handled many high-profile cases throughout his career. But his Scottish accent became known across the country after spending more than a decade defending Mr. Cadre, who was detained in Cuba’s notorious US military prison as a teenager.
“Dennis was a wonderful lawyer and friend. In my entire legal career, I have never met a lawyer who was more devoted to his clients,” said Alberta Court of Justice, a lawyer on Mr. Khadr’s defense team. King’s Court Judge Nathan Whiteling said. With Edney.
Edney was born in Dundee, a coastal city on the east coast of Scotland. A profile of Edney in a Scottish tabloid in 2012 said he was the son of a truck driver.
Edney told the Daily Record: “It’s my Scottish character that makes me a fighter against the government. I don’t like to see the weak being bullied.”
He left home at age 17 to become a low-level professional soccer player in San Francisco. He also worked as a truck driver and carpenter, but then decided to pursue a career in law and attended Northumbria University in England.
It wasn’t until 1987, when Edney was nearly 40 years old, that he became a criminal lawyer and made Canada his permanent home. His obituary said he had accepted Edmonton as his home for most of the past 45 years.
“Dennis put his heart and soul into everything he did, and his law practice reflected a passion for justice and an unyielding spirit,” his obituary said.
Edney’s legal practice focuses on criminal law and human rights law, and he has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada numerous times. Edney and Whitling were widely known as paragons of unpaid work. He was also the co-recipient of his 2008 National Pro Bono Award.
When Edney assumed legal representation for young detainees at Guantanamo Bay, he became a constant source of irritation for Ottawa authorities and frequently criticized then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government.
“Mr. Harper hates Muslims,” Edney said after a Supreme Court hearing in 2015.
Born in Toronto, Mr. Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured by the U.S. military in 2002 after a gunfight at a suspected al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan left a U.S. Special Forces soldier dead. Mr. Khadr was accused of throwing a grenade that killed his soldier.
Edney said when the boy was first taken into custody, he called Khadr’s family in Toronto to ask if they had legal representation. Edney visited Guantanamo and met Mr. Khadr, who he described as shattered and withdrawn.
Khadr later said he pleaded guilty in order to escape from Guantanamo Bay, where he was the youngest detainee. Later, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Canadian intelligence officials obtained evidence from Mr. Khadr during his 2003 interrogation at Guantanamo Bay under “oppressive conditions,” including sleep deprivation, and transferred that evidence to the United States. It was confirmed that the information had been shared with authorities.
The Canadian government later agreed to issue a $10.5 million settlement and an apology for violating Kadru’s constitutional rights.
Edney was appointed as a foreign legal consultant by the U.S. Department of Defense to participate in Mr. Cadre’s legal defense at a naval base in Cuba. When Khadr returned to Canada in 2012 to serve the remainder of his sentence, he continued to represent the young man.
Three years later, when Mr. Cuddle was released on bail, he moved in with Edney and his lawyer wife.
Patricia Edney told CBC shortly afterward that Kadru was welcome at her home and was free to stay “as long as he wishes.”
According to his obituary, the lawyer and his wife were soulmates from the beginning. They met in 1986 and were married six weeks later.
According to her obituary, her wedding attendants predicted to Patricia Edney that life would never be boring.
The couple had two sons, Cameron and Duncan. According to his obituary, Edney loved talking around the dinner table, going to the hockey field and ski slopes, and spoiling his dogs.
“His ultimate and eternal passion was his family.”
