Legal News

In First, Canada Clears Way for Deportation of U.S. Army Deserter

By Dan Slater

War Resisters Support Campaign holds a demonstration in support of U.S. Army deserter Robin Long outside Federal Court in Vancouver, B.C., on Monday July 14, 2008. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Darryl Dyck)

In what the Globe & Mail is reporting as a first, a federal court judge in Canada has cleared the way for Robin Long, a U.S. army deserter, to be deported back to his base in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Madam Justice Anne Mactavish dismissed Long’s last-ditch attempt to delay the process while he pursued further appeals. Long, 25, who fled to Ontario in 2005, had signed up to join the U.S. Army in 2003. He believed at that time that his country was justified in going to war in Iraq, his lawyer Shepherd Moss said at the court hearing to halt the deportation. “He wanted to go to defend his country,” Moss said.

“I was just shocked at some things in [the] ruling,” Bob Ages, a spokesman for an informal group called Vancouver War Resisters Support Campaign, told reporters outside the courtroom. “It just flies in the face of everything that we and every Canadian know about the reality of what is going on.” Agnes added: “I do not think there is any doubt someone being up in Canada, and a vocal opponent to the war, will be treated harshly by the American military.” (Here’s more from the Vancouver Sun.)

Justice Mactavish reportedly said that 94% of U.S. army deserters have been dealt with without a court martial or prison time. “While the American Universal [sic] Code of Military Justice allows for the theoretical possibility of a sentence of death for desertion, the last time a deserter was sentenced to death was during the Second World War,” Mactavish said in the four-page ruling. “Mr. Long has not provided clear and non-speculative evidence to support his contention that he would be singled out for hard treatment by Americans because of the publicity associated with the case.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 15, 2008 (boomark / email).