Video: US Deserter Gets Second Chance by Canada
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Joshua Key is one of the soldiers profiled in Peter Laufer’s book, Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq. The Real News Network recently covered his struggle to gain permanent asylum in Canada. (Listen to Peter Laufer interview Joshua Key on ChelseaGreenRadio.)
From the article:
A Canadian court has sided for the first time with a military deserter who fled to Canada seeking refugee status, ruling Friday that the US soldier witnessed enough human rights abuses during a stint in Iraq that he could qualify for asylum.
The decision also marked the first time that the federal court, which has heard a handful of cases involving deserters, concluded that military action against civilians in Iraq violates the 1949 Geneva Convention, an international prohibition against humiliating and degrading treatment.
Federal Court Justice Richard Barnes ordered the Immigration and Refugee Board to reconsider the failed refugee claim of Joshua Key, a soldier who entered Canada with his wife, Brandi, and their small children in March 2005.
Key, an army private, deserted during a two-week break from serving as a combat engineer in Iraq, where he spent eight months in 2003 and says he was involved in military-condoned home invasions against civilians.
“This is a real breakthrough,” said Lee Zaslofsky of the Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign. “What excites us is this may also apply to other war resisters who took part in Iraq.”
