On Friday, Nov. 14, war resister Joshua Key, author of The Deserter’s Tale will be speaking in Winnipeg.
When: 2:30 to 4:00 p.m.
Where: Room 301 Tier Building, University of Manitoba
He will also be at at Menno Simons College – 520 Portage at Spence St, on Friday, November 14 at 6 p.m. for the screening of the film “Close the School of the Assassins” — an even sponsored by the Student Christian Movement and Menno Simons College.
When Private First Class Joshua Key was shipped to Iraq, the US army combat engineer believed he was doing the right thing.
“I left for Iraq with a purpose, thinking this was another Hitler deal,” he said in a recent interview. “But there were no weapons of mass destruction. They had no military whatsoever. And I started to wonder.”
He served eight months in Iraq before going AWOL. Key arrived in Toronto in March of 2005, with his wife Brandi and their four young children. Asked what led him to desert, he says: “The atrocities that were happening to the innocent people of Iraq. I didn’t want to be part of it no more. I came home and I deserted.”
On July 4 2008, the Federal Court ordered that the Immigration & Refugee Board hold a new hearing for Joshua’s refugee claim.