| Abdullah Ahmed Khadr | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 30, 1981 |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Home town | Toronto, Canada & Peshawar, Pakistan |
| Religion | Muslim |
| Parents | Ahmed Khadr Maha el-Samnah |
Abdullah Ahmed Khadr (in Arabic عبدالله أحمد خضر) (born April 30, 1981) is the oldest son of Ahmed Khadr and brother of Omar Khadr who has been charged with war crimes before the Guantanamo military commission.
He has admitted buying weapons for al-Qaeda, but maintains that he was merely on friendly terms with its leaders due to his father's prominence, and not a member himself. He has said that he would "be the first one to stop" any potential attacks against Canada.[1]
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As a child, Abdullah claimed his vision of Jannah involved fast cars.[2] In 1994, he was sent to Khalden training camp along with his brother Abdurahman, where he was given the alias Hamza.[2] Omar Nasiri later claimed to have met Abdullah in the camp's infirmary, where he had told Nasiri about witnessing Afghans in Khost blown apart while trying to salvage an unexploded bomb, although Abdullah himself does not remember the encounter.[2] The two brothers fought constantly at the camp, one day their argument became so heated that Abdullah pointed his AK-47 and Abdurahman his PPK handgun, at each other screaming, before a trainer stepped between them.[3] In 1997, a dispute between the brothers was mediated by Abu Laith al-Libi, who earned their confidence and respect telling them about Dubai and Ferraris, later described as "really cool" by Abdurahman.[2] When the family was leaving Nizam Jihad in 1998, Abdurahman and Abdullah fought over seating in the car, and the fight ended with the older Khadr chasing his brother around the car with an AK-47 screaming.[2]
As the oldest son, Abdullah would often drive his crippled father around Pakistan.[2] Following the American invasion of Afghanistan the family split up. In 2002, Zaynab took Abdulkareem to Lahore where her two-year old daughter needed medical attention. The siblings were later joined by Abdullah, since he required surgery to remove cartilage from his nose.[2]
A Taliban spokesman said that the January 26, 2004 suicide bomber that killed Cpl. Jamie Murphy in Kabul was "Mohammed", the son of a Canadian supposedly named Abdulrahman Khadr. The similar names led some to speculate it had been Abdullah, the only son of the family whose whereabouts were unknown at the time.[4] DNA samples from the bomber later proved it wasn't Khadr.[5]
Abdullah was interviewed for the 2004 documentary Son of al Qaeda, and acknowledged attending the Khalden training camp. But he said that a ten-year-old learning to fire an AK47 was as common in Afghanistan as it was for a Canadian child to learn to play hockey.[6] This statement was later used by Richard J. Griffin to label Khadr as "one of the world's most dangerous men"[7]
In 2000, he allegedly had contact with a "high level member of al-Qaeda" who took the 19-year old with him to purchase weapons for fighting against the Northern Alliance militants and supplying an Afghan training camp.[8]
It is alleged that in 2003, Abdullah's father Ahmed Khadr was asked to organise militants operating near the border of Shagai, Pakistan, and subsequently asked the 22-year-old Abdullah to help him procure weapons due to his experience several years earlier.[8] Allegedly, Khadr procured weapons for his father, and became an arms dealer, selling weapons to other militants, earning himself about $5000 in profit[8] on the transactions of approximately $20,000 worth of mortar rounds, landmines, grenades and AK-47 ammunition.[1][9]
After his father's death in October 2003, Abdullah allegedly continued his trade in weapons.[8]
Khadr also allegedly read the instruction manual for a GPS unit to determine its operation for militant friends in Pakistan who wanted to measure the distance between a local graveyard and a house he believed belonged to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. The house turned out to belong to President Pervez Musharraf, and Khadr's friends were later arrested near the graveyard.[10]
He is also alleged to have purchased a forged Pakistani passport for 30,000 rupees ($600), and to have given it to his sister Zaynab for safekeeping.[11][12]
In October 2004, he was allegedly in the process of purchasing five Soviet 9K38 Igla Surface-to-air missiles for $1000 apiece from a 29-year-old Pakistani member of Lakshar e-Taiba with whom he offered to split the profit upon selling the weapons for $5000 apiece to the same man who'd taught him how to acquire munitions in 2000.[8][10]
An "American intelligence agency" classed Khadr as a threat, and offered a $500,000 bounty for his capture.[13] He was arrested on October 15, 2004.[14] Four days after his capture, "agents of the United States", including an FBI agent, visited the "quasi-prison"[15] to interview Khadr. The visits continued for seventeen days.[15] Canada became aware of his capture in November,[14] and details about the bounty on Khadr were initially hidden from the public, under claims it would threaten national security to admit the fact. However a Canadian October 19, 2004 memo describing the bounty was accidentally released in 2007. Reporters were warned not to publish the information, and the Globe and Mail newspaper took the government to court to fight the secrecy order.[13] Justice Richard Mosley ruled that the information could be made public in May 2008, stating "the fact that a foreign state paid a bounty for the apprehension of a Canadian citizen abroad and that Canadian officials were aware of it at an early state is also a matter in which the public would have a legitimate interest.[13]
Pakistan allegedly offered to repatriate Khadr to Canada several weeks after his arrest, but Canadian officials refused and suggested Pakistan look into turning him over to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instead.[14]
In April 2005, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arranged for officers from Project A-O, including Richard Jenkins,[16] to fly to Pakistan to question Khadr for three days, ostensibly to prove that they were a "self-sufficient intelligence agency".[15] Abdullah stated that when he was about 14-years old, his father had purchased two pairs of walkie talkies from Abdullah Almalki, although his lawyers later argued the statement had been made due to his mistreatment by Pakistani officials.[17] He was also questioned about Amer el-Maati, who he said had worked as a carpet salesman after al-Qaeda had refused to grant him a pension following a brain injury stemming from a 1992 car accident.[1] Asked about Mahmoud Jaballah, Khadr said he only knew him as an Arabic tutor in Peshawar who went by the patronymic Abu Ahmed.[1] Asked about Toronto Imam Aly Hindy, Khadr said that his son Ibrahim had briefly attended the Musab al-Surri Afghan training camp several years prior to 9/11,[1] a fact that Hindy has spoken about himself.[18] The RCMP later resigned themselves to the fact that it was unlikely Khadr could be prosecuted under Canadian law, since any statements made following "mistreatment" by Pakistani officials would hold no weight in the courts.[15]
In June 2005, Canadian officials believed that negotiations with Pakistan had succeeded, and removed Khadr from no-fly lists, hired guards to escort him, and issued Khadr an emergency passport, no. EC016094.[15] He was scheduled to fly home aboard a British Airways flight from Islamabad, scheduled to land in Toronto at 18:00, June 15, 2005.[15] Canadian consular officials were "mystified" when he wasn't at the airport, and a note was immediately sent within the Foreign Affairs office stating "Given subj[ect] is now not returning to Cda, grateful mission wld ask Pakistani authorities what happened, where he is, which authority is holding him, etc. etc, and a new consular visit asap".[15]
In July, FBI agent Gregory T. Hughes and Diplomatic Security Service agent Galen J. Nace interrogated Khadr for three days. On each day, Khadr waived any Miranda rights and agreed to speak with them.[8] He repeated his earlier confession regarding his alleged training in Khalden, and purchasing munitions for the same "high level member of al-Qaeda" he had worked with in 2000.[8]
Pakistan still refused to hand Khadr over to the United States, insisting he should be returned to Canada.[11] On November 23, 2005, a Boston court accepted prosecutor James B. Farmer's request for a request to extradite Khadr from Canada - and eight days later Canada agreed to take Khadr from Pakistan. The timing led critics to speculate that Canada was simply helping the United States get around Pakistan's refusal to hand over Khadr to American forces.[16][19]
Abdullah returned to Canada on December 2, 2005 accompanied by two officials from the Foreign Affairs department, and was met by RCMP officer Konrad Shourie and others who interviewed him for 2.5 hours.[20] Two days later, Khadr agreed to another interview with FBI agents in the presence of Shourie.[10][11][16][21] Court documents confirmed that he and his sister Zaynab were both under investigation by the RCMP for terrorism-related offences,[2] though commentators expressed confusion why he wasn't facing any criminal charges under Canadian law.[22] During his sixteen days of freedom in Canada, Khadr was under constant RCMP surveillance.[20]
On December 17, 2005 Khadr was phoned by the Canadian police and asked to meet them at a nearby McDonalds' restaurant. When he arrived, he was arrested based on the Boston extradition order, while the RCMP insisted the arrest "had nothing to do with" Canadian police.[19][23] His mother was also arrested after she hit a police officer present, while his brother Abdurahman took photos of the arrest with his camera phone.[23] The next day, Prime Minister Paul Martin spoke at length about Abdullah and other members of the Khadr family, reiterating that there was only one kind of Canadian citizenship, and that Abdullah, and the other members of his family were as entitled to all the legal protections as any other citizen. [24]
Khadr was denied bail five days later by Justice Anne Molloy of Ontario's Superior Court of Justice.[25] Abdullah was represented by Nathan Whitling, Dennis Edney and James Silver.[20][26] He wore a black t-shirt reading "For the Future of Islam", and his grandmother Fatmah el-Samnah offered to act as his surety, putting up her $300,000 house as collateral. The motion for bail was opposed by prosecutor Robin Parker, who referenced American claims that the forged passport Khadr had purchased in Pakistan had been intended to allow him to flee to a country without an extradition treaty with the United States,[12] Khadr's lawyers attempted to have a publication ban bar media from reporting on the bail hearing. Prosecutor Robin Parker opposed this request for a publication ban, citing the open courts principle. Justice Molloy refused to order the publication ban, and ultimately denied bail. She found that there was an unacceptable risk that Khadr would flee, and also that the public confidence in the administration of justice would be undermined were she to grant Khadr bail. A second application for bail which was brought before Justice Gary Trotter was also refused.
On May 22, 2006, he was involved in a brawl with another inmate at Toronto West Detention Centre over telephone privileges.[27] He appeared in court shortly afterwards, where he was represented by attorney James Silver, and his extradition hearing was set to begin October 30.[27]
On April 7, 2008, he appeared in a Toronto court to argue against extradition to the United States, alleging that his confessions in Pakistan were obtained through torture.[28]
Classified evidence was not shown to the public, but was shared with both Khadr and his lawyers, and judge Richard Mosley wrote a private summary of the information it contained. Khadr argued that the evidence was simply what he had said to convince Pakistani captors to stop torturing him.[29]
On October 5, 2009 Abdullah Khadr testified about his capture and treatment in Pakistan.[30][31][32] Colin Freeze, writing in the Globe and Mail, reporting on Abdullah's claims of torture, reported: "Ultimately, the judge will decide how to square Mr. Khadr's alleged admissions with such legal principles as the right to remain silent and the right to counsel, in determining whether any of his statements ought to count at all."
Isabel Teotonio, writing in the Toronto Star, reported that Abdullah testified that he was beaten and "penetrated" by a rubber paddle during the fourteen months he spent in Pakistani extrajudicial detention.[32]
Following final arguments regarding the USA's request to extradite Khadr on April 7, 8 and 9, 2010,[33] Ontario Superior Court Justice Christopher Speyer denied the extradition request on August 4, 2010 and Abdullah Khadr was set free after 4½ years.[34]
Abdullah told reporters after his release. “I think this is going to be a new beginning for me in life.”[35][36][37]
Michelle Shephard, the Toronto Star's national security expert, reported that Speyer's ruling was 62 pages long.[35] According to Shephard, while criticizing the $500,000 bounty the USA offered, and the abuse Abdullah suffered, Speyer wrote: “the rule of law must prevail over intelligence objectives.”
Dennis Edney, one of Abdullah's lawyers, said, “When a U.S. government or any foreign government steps into a Canadian court they have to arrive with clean hands.”[35]
The Canadian government appealed the courts decision but lost its case on May 7, 2011 when the highest court in Ontario confirmed unanimous in a 3-0 ruling the original judge's decision to deny the extradition request.[38]
According to Nathan Whitling another of Abdullah's lawyers, he is engaged to be married.[36]