Intelligence

Khadr denies `spy' deal

TheStar.com - Khadr denies `spy' deal

Didn't lead U.S. to father, contacts
Canadian released from Guantanamo
MICHELLE SHEPHARD
STAFF REPORTER

Abdurahman Khadr was released from the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in return for his co-operation in leading U.S. intelligence officers to his father and associates, according to Canadian government sources.

U.S. intelligence says Ahmed Said Khadr has Al Qaeda connections and raises funds for the terrorist network; they have been searching for him since 2001.

Sources told the Star the deal was made with Abdurahman Khadr, 21, without the knowledge of the Canadian government, but Khadr did not uphold his side of the agreement.

Last night, Khadr vehemently denied these claims and said U.S. authorities told him he was released because they had no evidence linking him to any terrorist activity.

"There was no deal," he said of the allegation he was supposed to lead the Americans to his father.

"Why are they saying this now? If they say it's true, why didn't they come forward with this when I first came back (to Canada)?"

The story of Khadr's release made national headlines last month when his grandmother and Toronto lawyer Rocco Galati held a news conference to say the young Canadian citizen was stranded abroad and had been denied Canadian assistance in Pakistan and Turkey when he tried to return home.

Canadian officials said at the time that if he was turned away from the embassies in Islamabad or Ankara, it was by local guards, not embassy officials.

One week after the news conference, Khadr arrived in Toronto, accompanied by an embassy official from Sarajevo.

He said American authorities had dropped him in Afghanistan where they left him without money or identification, and he was left to make his way through three countries before arriving in Sarajevo.

Khadr also admitted, upon his return, that he had trained at an "Al Qaeda-related" camp as a teenager.

And he told reporters that he believed his father was dead, killed at the beginning of October.

"Do you think I could lead them to my father when he was killed on Oct. 2?" Khadr said yesterday.

"I was released by mid-October. There was no deal (with American authorities)."

The Pentagon, however, has said Khadr was released in July, not October, a discrepancy that has never been resolved.

Pakistani authorities have never confirmed the death of Khadr's father — known as "Al Kanadi," the Canadian — or that of his 14-year-old brother, Karim, both rumoured to have been killed in October.

A spokesperson with the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa said yesterday Canada has not received official confirmation of the elder Khadr's death.

In an effort to determine if the two are dead or are being detained, Khadr's wife and daughter announced at an Islamabad press conference yesterday that they'd launched a lawsuit in Pakistan's Supreme Court seeking information on the men.

Lawyer Hashmat Ali Habib said he had filed the petition on behalf of Ahmed Said Khadr's wife Maha Elsamnah, of Scarborough, and his daughter Zaynab Khadr, 24, requesting that the women be allowed to meet their missing family members if they were being held, so they could arrange legal assistance.

But the news conference, at Habib's home in Islamabad, was interrupted by local officials and uniformed and plainclothes officers.

They halted the media briefing and began seizing microphones and documents from reporters.

"They came in and tried to persuade everyone to leave," Zaynab said in a telephone interview with the Star last night.

Reporters protesting the intrusion were told by Islamabad district administration official Asadullah Faiz:

"I have been sent by higher authorities to stop this press conference. We have secret information that there is some relation with Al Qaeda.

"This family and some other people living with the family have very close relations with Al Qaeda," Faiz said, adding that their lawyer was also considered a suspect.

Zaynab said yesterday her family has been wrongly accused.

Once authorities arrested her brothers, the female members of the Khadr family were forced to leave their home in Kabul and hide in the mountains in Pakistan, helped by local people who offered them shelter and food. "It's a really tough life," Zaynab said yesterday. "We're far from any civilization, away from electricity, water. We saw what happened to my dad and brothers, though, so it didn't seem like we had much choice."

Habib, the family lawyer, said yesterday that Khadr's father went missing in Pakistan's northwest in early October.

"It is not clear whether Ahmed Said Khadr and his son Abdul Karim, both Canadian Arab Muslims doing charity work in South Waziristan, were killed or arrested by authorities in an operation," Habib said yesterday.

On Oct. 2, eight people were killed when Pakistani commandos laid siege to a suspected Al Qaeda hideout in mud-walled tribal homes in the South Waziristan district bordering Afghanistan; 18 were arrested.

Pakistani, Canadian and U.S. officials claim they do not know the whereabouts of the elder Khadr and his youngest son.

One of the Khadr sons, 17-year-old Omar, is still being held at Guantanamo, accused of killing an American medic during a gun battle in Afghanistan.

December 31, 2003 at 05:15 AM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home