Conservative foreign affairs critic Peter Kent penned a scathing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal he says in order to educate the American public about the Omar Khadr case, while also blasting the federal government’s decision to issue an apology and a reported $10.5-million settlement to the former child soldier and Guantanamo Bay detainee.

In the piece titled “A terrorist’s big payday, courtesy of Trudeau,” Kent calls the payout an “affront” to the two American soldiers Khadr was accused of injuring, one of them fatally, in a grenade attack in Afghanistan when he was 15.

“This payout was a cynical subversion of Canadian principles,” Kent wrote in the piece. “Mr. Trudeau made Omar Khadr a millionaire, and he didn’t have to.”

Kent told CTV News Channel he wanted to inform Americans about the Khadr case, which has received little media attention in the United States.

“I certainly believe that we should be absolutely honest with our best friends, our neighbours and our allies in the war against terror,” he said Tuesday.

His comments fall in line with an apparent cross-border media campaign by the Conservatives to keep the Khadr debate alive.

One day after Kent’s piece was published, Alberta MP Michelle Rempel appeared on Fox News to deliver similar criticism.

Rempel told host Tucker Carlson Monday night that “most Canadians are absolutely outraged about this” and accused the Liberals of making the decision “in a vacuum” while MPs were away for the summer.

“This is not, like, a partisan political issue,” Rempel said. “This is something that people who actually voted for this government are going, ‘I’m not comfortable with this.’”

Ontario Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant staged her own attack in a mock newscast streamed on Facebook, dubbed Gallant Nightly News (GNN).

Gallant took aim at the Khadr settlement and blamed “fake news” for circulating the issue.

Her Facebook post, published last week, has since been deleted.

Giving the Khadr story ‘new life’

Pollster Nik Nanos called the Conservatives’ efforts to spread their message to American outlets “a clever media tactic.”

“The Conservatives breathe new life and more legs into the story by having it covered in the United States,” he said.

The federal government announced earlier this month that it had reached a settlement with Khadr, though it did not confirm the amount of the payment.

The settlement closes Khadr’s longstanding lawsuit against the government over the 10 years he spent as an inmate in Guantanamo Bay, which he argued violated his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Kent accused the federal government of “rushing” ahead with the reported $10.5-million payment to Khadr in order to keep the funds from being subject to a massive lawsuit claim by the slain American soldier’s widow.

“He has an opportunity at creating a new life that none of the victims of al Qaeda or the Taliban have,” Kent told CTV News Channel.

Kent, a former journalist, wrote his piece in the style of a news article. Kent’s piece opens with a description of the grenade attack, and outlines Khadr’s background and family connection to al Qaeda.

Two Supreme Court of Canada decisions ruled that Canadian intelligence officers illegally shared information about him with the U.S., and that Khadr’s human rights were violated.

Khadr pleaded to guilty to five counts of war crimes in 2010 and was sentenced to 40 years in prison, although a pre-trial deal cut that down to eight years. He was transferred to Canada in 2012 and granted bail in 2015.

Khadr said the confession that led to the guilty plea was made under torture.

With a report from CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Joyce Napier