I thought that providing government health care and welfare payments to al Qaeda’s favorite Canadians, the Khadr family, was just misplaced Canadian generosity: “Family members have spoken scornfully of Canadian society, as they receive medical care and welfare payments that keep them in a pleasant apartment in Toronto,” the Washington Post once noted.
Turns out, Canada was just in the forefront of international human rights.
Not to be outdone, the European Court of Justice has now declared that the live-in wives of UN-designated terrorists are entitled to receive family assistance payments. The UN asset freeze is irrelevant, you see, because welfare payments made to the terrorists’ wives aren’t supposed to be misused. According to the Counterterrorism Blog,
“The court indicated that the essential purpose and object of the asset freeze was to combat international terrorism, and to cut off terrorists from financial resources that would be used for terrorist activities. Yet, it should be presumed, the court reasoned, that the social payments involved here would be used only for household expenses. If and when such payments were turned over to the designated spouse for terrorist purposes, the court reasoned, the UK authorities could then hold the spouse accountable other UK laws and penalties.”
Well, that settles that. No self-respecting terrorist would cheat a Western government, and terror investigators have nothing better to do than audit the household accounts of families like the Khadrs.
Considering that they sit in Northern Europe, it’s remarkable what a sunny world the judges of the ECJ inhabit.