A Canadian AlQueda family speaks - RealPlayer video - CBC

[Wonk]

The son, Abdul Rahman Khader (sp?), was captured in Afghanistan and recently released from Gitmo, and is now willing to tell his story openly. The mother and sister are also interviewed. The father, who was tight with Osama, died in Afghanistan.

(snip)

"My father tried three times to make me a suicide bomber, but I don't believe in blowing myself up and killing innocent people."

http://www.cbc.ca/clips/national/thenational.ram

This video link will only work for the next ~24 hours.

Fast forward to 26:30 for the beginning of this segment. It ends rather abruptly. I think this is part one of a documentary film that's a work in progress.

[Wonk]

1. It's also playing on CBC NewsWorld right now for anyone who gets that. nt

[whirlygigspin]

2. what a family of idiots

the mother says she'd rather have her kids die fighting for her religion than to be on drugs and having homo sex.
Wow, what a choice!
(whatever happened to stamp collecting as a pass time?)

--She sounds exaclty like a republican!--

ha

[iverglas]

3. thanks Wonk - hope people look

(I can't, too luddite ... missed it on TV.)

The Khadr family's tale is complex and weird, indeed.

One son was released from Guantanamo a few months ago. Although he is a Canadian citizen, the Cdn govt was not told of his release. He was told by the US authorities that Canada didn't want him, and he was shipped to Afghanistan. After unsuccessfully attempting to persuade locally-employed guards at a couple of Cdn embassies (Pakistan, Turkey) to let him in because he was a Canadian -- having been dumped by the US in Afghanistan with no papers -- he finally got to see officials and was returned to Canada.

One son remains in Guantanamo. He was a juvenile (15, I believe) when he was captured and there has never been a satisfactory explanation given for his detention. The most reasonable explanation is that US authorities wanted him for the information he might provide about his father's Al Qaeda activities.

Obviously, this father exploited his children horribly. They acknowledge attending training camps in Afghanistan (but point out that most adolescent boys there did that). There have been confusing reports of who died in the incident in which the father was ultimately confirmed to have been killed, and I've kind of lost track, but I believe one other son is in hospital (in Pakistan?).

It is one of the tragedies of armed conflict in today's world that children are not only victims of violence, but forced to participate in it. Even when they don't lose their lives literally (or their limbs; child "soldiers" are often mutilated by their controllers), they lose their lives. Without a childhood, no one can become a person.

Graça Machel's classic report "Impact of Armed Conflict on Children" addresses all this.
http://www.un.org/rights/introduc.htm
The UN has a Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict:
http://www.un.org/special-rep/children-armed-conflict/

Newsworld reported this morning that a new report on the issue has just been submitted to the UN by an "independent human rights" group which it unfortunately did not name, and I haven't found it on line yet. HRW did release a report in January, and this may be what the reference was to:
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/01/16/africa6937_txt.htm

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[iverglas]

11. so ... it was all a lie: the facts

All that stuff about the US holding him in Guantanamo and then dumping him back in Afghanistan -- all a lie.

He was working for the CIA -- for anybody seeing this thread and not knowing what it was about, here's a thumbnail.

Abdulrahman Khadr, one of five sons of a man believed (and I believe it) to have been an intimate of Osama bin Laden, was captured in Afghanistan at the time of the invasion. (All the family are naturalized Canadian citizens.)

He was offered money in return for giving US authorities in Afghanistan information -- he went on a tour of the city with them, identifying people and places of interest: safe houses and so on.

They proposed that he become a prisoner in Guantanamo in order to obtain information from prisoners. Accordingly, he was treated like any other prisoner, to build and maintain his cover. His description of the flight to Guantanamo and his time there as a prisoner was wrenching; he said he was broken by the time he arrived, and of course that was just the beginning.

After a few months, he told his controllers that they had got it just about all wrong -- only about 1 in 10 of the people they were holding in Guantanamo had any reason to be there. Their big mistake had been offering reward money to people who turned in alleged Al-Qaeda members; most of the people there are there because of the reward money paid for them and nothing else.

He ultimately could not tolerate the conditions of detention any longer, and had himself removed from the general population, and was given better quarters and privileges. The CIA then proposed that he work for them in Bosnia, for regular monthly pay of $3,000. He agreed and they took him there with a false Moroccan passport, set him up, and had him mingle with the Muslim population and make reports.

Ultimately they asked him to accompany the US forces in Iraq. He was originally agreeable, and then they impressed on him the danger that this meant and he declined. They took back all the stuff they'd given him and dropped him off at the Canadian embassy. He called his grandmother in Toronto and she went to the press with the story that the Cdn authorities had been rebuffing him, and he returned to Canada.

His lawyer, Rocco Galatti, is the one who resigned alleging death threats received (a claim I never found credible). One has to wonder whether he was informed, by someone, of the truth and was therefore unable to continue representing the client in a lie.

One certainly also has to wonder what information the Cdn govt was given, and when. It has been accused, loudly and at length, of not looking out for this Cdn citizen's interests. It has been accused of exchanging intelligence with the US contrary to his interests. If Cdn intelligence *did* know the facts, it was correct to refuse to discuss anything in public, because it was bound to protect Khadr's privacy (not to mention his safety).

He is now living in Toronto and facing a divided Muslim community. His family (mother and sister in Pakistan attending to the 14-year-old brother who was paralyzed by a bullet in the firefight that killed the father) had not yet been told the whole truth when they were interviewed, but the sister said that if he had genuinely helped "the enemy", and not just pretended to in order to protect himself, she would be ashamed of him.

His position is that he is the "black sheep" son who rejected his father's exploitation and attempts to turn his children into Al-Qaeda fanatics. He resents his father hugely, and had no emotions on hearing of his death. He and his story seem credible.

Please do watch the video if you can. I looked for reports of it on CNN this morning -- after all, it is about genuine US attempts to combat terrorism (e.g. the undercover work in Bosnia) ... but it is also about the futility and wrongness of the whole Guantanamo business. Didn't see anything there.

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[MrPrax]

4. Fascinating and Shocking at the same time

Even to cynics, this little 'peek' into Osama's 'circle' is quite interesting and the most thorough and reliable I have seen to date...

Seemingly very candid...

Part Two will be played in Canada on the National-Newsworld at various times...and this one should be the bomb.

Apparantly Abdul Kotar was sent to Gitmo, not as a prisoner, but as an CIA informant - prison house snitch! (he was also sent around the world on the CIA ticket as an undercover agent)

The documentary is by Terrence McKenna...

If you can get a chance to catch it--then it is definitely a riveting piece of film...

[Wonk]

5. vp3 video of part one here, and part two will be on CBC tonight.

77 M

Opens with QuickTime Player.

[Wonk]

6. Part Two (RealPlayer) is online now, same URL as above.

Fast forward to 22:30 for the start of the segment.

http://www.cbc.ca/clips/national/thenational.ram

[whirlygigspin]

7. kick

www.cbc.ca/MRL/clips/national/thenational.ram

part 2 starts at 23:00minutes into the broadcast

[Wonk]

8. WATCH THIS NOW BEFORE IT'S GONE. I was going to archive it, but

it wasn't on the CBCNW rebroadcast. They cut off early for some Antiques Roadshow crap.

Please feel free to kick this thread until tomorrow night when their RealPlayer stream will change again.

[iverglas]

12. CBC / Newsworld

I've made that mistake in the past -- Newsworld only rebroadcasts the actual news segment, and not the "journal" part of the hour.

Screaming Lord Byron posted the story in LBN this morning, to no response; I've put the links there, too.

I find no mention of it in US media this morning. That just strikes me as odd -- it's a US story. The CIA, Guantanamo -- both good and bad. I mean, *I* think that the genuine intelligence work the CIA is doing to counteract international terrorist networks is "good". And the fact that prisoners are allegedly being held in Guanatanamo because somebody sold them to the US for a reward, that's "bad". But it's *news*, however you look at it.

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[Bozita]

13. Maybe this thread needs a new birth with a super-catchy title

Something like:

CBCNews video vanishes tonight: Osama, CIA, recruiting spooks, Gitmo, more...

or

???

[iverglas]

14. well, try LBN

The title there has "CIA" in it, but it's not catching much attention either.

Maybe people are busy watching the video. Speaking of which, can somebody link the vp3 (?) video thingy over there? I don't understand those things and don't want to do it wrong. (I clicked on the link and got the beginning of a couple of thousand K of gibberish. Hit me, I'm a technoilliterate.)

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[Lisa]

16. Newsworld -- REBROADCAST on the weekend

CBC website says 3:30 on Saturday, 6:30 Sunday.

Search for "Khadr Documentary Special".

[Wonk]

20. Thanks. Here are mp3s of both in the meantime.

Part 1, 6 M

Part 2, 6 M

Elsewhere in this thread someone mentioned having difficulty playing vp3 files. There are two ways to play them. You can copy the URL then from within QuickTime Player "Open URL in new player" and paste the url, or you can download the file to disk first and then open it with quicktime player.

[Bozita]

9. great stuff from CBC

thanks, Wonk.

[Bozita]

10. This is worthy of a "MUST SEE TV" label

Like Wonk says, see it before it's gone.

[Lisa]

15. sounds to me like it was some weird personality cult ...

Usama had a whole bunch of otherwise-intelligent grownups running around trying to gain his favour, even if meant sending their kids off to die! When Abdulrahman (sp?) objected to being packed off to AQ boot camp, his dad went on about doing things that would make Usama proud, just so they could continue living next-door to him in his personal compound. And when the son pointed out that Usama wasn't as saintly as all that (for all the fawning about how "simple" a lifestyle bin Laden had, he gave up the trappings but not the power) -- his family got upset. Abdulrahman sure isn't perfect, and he may not be the sharpest knife in the kitchen, but he figured out what kind of person Usama was. And he refused to be manipulated into being a martyr.

It was almost funny, if it weren't so tragic, that the mother and daughter were whining about how the inner circle didn't trust them. Well, duh! I was shocked to find out that the daughter is 20-something. She seems bright, but her ability to think for herself is shockingly bad. Looks like her folks weren't about to teach her that. Maybe she'll change her mind when she gets older (after all, Jan Wong was a keen Maoist at that age, but she's now writing a conservative column for the Globe and Mail).

Anyway, there was something about the story last year (Abdulrahman making his way from Afghanistan to Bosnia by himself, with no money) that had me wondering. The CIA involvement makes more sense.

I hope the guy will be all right. He's had a pretty messed-up life.

All in all, a pretty revealing documentary.

[iverglas]

17. his old story

How credible was it? That was my problem - but in the opposite direction. That story of his wandering did make perfect sense.

I've had lots of clients who have done the Iran-Turkey-Europe and parts nearby trek, trying to get to here. And I know all about how locally-hired staff like embassy guards treat people. So the idea that he'd gone from one country to another, trying to get somebody at a Cdn embassy to talk to him, rang quite true. (The Galatti death threat didn't, but I didn't know enough about the background, that guy in the Don jail with his pre-9/11 warning of what was about to happen and all that, to have an actual informed opinion. And I did overhear something not too far off a death threat against me once in a situation involving foreign agents, just not from the CIA or whoever was supposed to have threatened Galatti. ;) )

I do feel a bit of a sucker, I gotta tell you, though. Here I felt like I was in a reasonable position to judge his credibility, and I thought he and his story were credible. So nobody should listen to my opinion about his currrent story! -- But as he said, could he have made up the details he recounted on CBC? That's a major factor in assessing credibility: details that the average person wouldn't have the wherewithal to invent and keep straight. As you said -- he himself might not be the brightest the brightest bulb, and that actually contributes to his credibility.

I'm just waiting for somebody in the US media to notice this. Seriously -- what's up? I want to see the spin that goes on it there!

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[Lisa]

18. I've only talked to people who ...

... made the Central Asia to Europe trip in the 1970s, so I figure you are more up-to-date than I am on present conditions. Even Trudeau said that getting the brush-off at our overseas embassies is kind of like a tradition!

All that I remember of the old story was that his account of his itinerary sounded rather confused, and it seemed a little weird to me that he had given up so quickly instead of hanging around until he got some kind of answer -- many people I know who've worked overseas have told me that it takes several days to get things done, even if it's something as simple as getting papers renewed. Surely he would have known this. Especially when his grandmother was in Canada and he could have given them her phone number, etc., to verify, so at least they'd have a record of it.

Re: Galatti, he didn't seem to be the kind of guy who would back down from a death threat (I'd imagine that someone who is used to dealing with controversial issues would have received them before ... a former MP told me that she received a whole bunch of them, and she was just a generic backbencher).

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that there seems to be corroboration coming even from "hostile" family members. And as you say, the stories are not so bizarre that they boggle the imagination. They're relatively straightforward, almost drab. No gunplay or heroics with the CIA agents -- they just pity him and take him fishing. If Abdulrahman is a congenital liar, he isn't coming up with the grandiose, self-aggrandizing things I would expect ... my next-door neighbour and a couple of co-workers had that trait, and they would never have painted a scenario that involved humiliation and failure (e.g. the Gitmo trip).

As far as being a "sucker" -- it sounds like there are bits of his old story mixed in with the new revelations, so I don't think you should feel as if you were fooled. I mean, even our former PM ended up helping the dad and mom, when it looks like they were hiding a lot.

[iverglas]

19. foreigners at embassies

The ones I was talking about -- they were non-Canadians, actually on clandestine trajectories from where they wanted to get out of, to somewhere like here, eventually. Or just to disappear into a nearby country. Refugees. The Rio Grande has its coyotes, the Iranian borders have their passeurs (I never know what to call them in English) too; you get out, and if you've paid enough you get passed on. Or you just make your own way out and keep going as best you can.

It can take a long time to get things done at an embassy -- if you manage to get started. If you're a guy standing outside the gates speaking Arabic or Urdu to a locally-hired guard, with not a shred of evidence that you've ever had anything to do with Canada and no papers of any kind at all, you just plain don't get started; you don't get past the gate, you never see anybody who might be in a position to do anything if they happened to want to. And him being really pretty much a kid, it didn't surprise me that he didn't organize a strategy, like by calling the grandmother earlier.

I'm curious why nobody's asking Galatti for comment, and assume that he would decline completely anyway given that any information he had from the client would be privileged, and any information he might have happened to get from intelligence service-type sources would have been contrary to his client's interests to reveal at that time and contrary to his to reveal now, I'd think.

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[Wonk]

21. It's on CBC NewsWorld again now, for anyone who gets that. nt