Intelligence

DiManno: `Al Qaeda family' in court

TheStar.com - DiManno: `Al Qaeda family' in court

Dec. 23, 2005. 06:14 AM
ROSIE DIMANNO

It was a court officer, a young man with a clear understanding of the rules of decorum as they are practised in this country, who prevailed upon the matriarch of the notorious Khadr clan — an "Al Qaeda family," as once described by one of her own sons — to rise for the entrance and exit of the judge yesterday.

This is a small but established gesture of respect for the robed embodiment of the law and routinely enforced by court officials, who are vigilant in admonishing spectators who fail to conduct themselves accordingly.

ut no one else has ever applied the same standards of behaviour to Maha Khadr on all the occasions that this widow of a high-ranking Osama bin Laden associate has found herself in a Canadian courtroom, where various of her brood have been the subject of judicial procedures.

She didn't like being told to stand.

And, a quick study, Mrs. Khadr ensured that she would not have to do so again, remaining outside the courtroom during breaks until Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy was seated at the bench. Only then did she enter, settling herself alongside a son, Abdurahman, whence she proceeded to mutter under her breath about all and sundry, frequently caressing a folded item of apparel that might have been the vest her husband was wearing when he was slain during a shootout with Pakistani troops along the Afghan frontier in October of 2003. As Mrs. Khadr has explained in the past, she takes the precious vest with her everywhere.

Mother and son — this, the offspring who was among the first to wend his way back to Scarborough from misadventures abroad, the family endlessly travelling between Canada, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bahrain over the last two decades — clasped each other's hands tightly. Mrs. Khadr's hands, soft and plump, are all that can be seen of her, save for the dark, flashing eyes that peer out from behind a veil drawn across her face, in the fashion of a pious Muslim woman. Repeatedly, she dabbed at those eyes with a scrunched tissue, pressed fingers to brow, leaned her forehead against the back of the seat, in an extended pantomime of aggrieved feelings.

On this day, it was her 24-year-old son, Abdullah Khadr, who was in the dock, returned to the bosom of the family only 20 days earlier — such joy there had been upon their reunion — after several years of mysterious but not entirely silent absence (there was that damning, rah-rah jihad interview he granted nearly two years ago to TV reporters from an undisclosed hideout), during which he was allegedly busy procuring missiles, munitions and such to be used by Al Qaeda forces against American and coalition troops (including Canadians) in Afghanistan, and plotting to kill the prime minister of Pakistan.

Those are among the allegations contained in affidavits sworn by American and Canadian law enforcement officials, information obtained directly from Abdullah Khadr in interviews conducted both while he was in Pakistani custody after his arrest earlier this year and immediately upon his arrival at Pearson airport on Dec. 2.

Pakistani officials, it is claimed, had refused to turn Khadr over to American authorities but were agreeable to palming him off on to Canadians. The U.S. Department of Justice has applied for Khadr's extradition to stand trial on charges of possession and use of a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence and conspiracy to murder an American national outside of the U.S.

Yesterday's hearing, which continues today, is to determine whether Khadr should be released on bail, pending the extradition request.

Both the U.S. and Canadian federal prosecutors object to releasing Khadr, with the Americans asserting that he is a flight risk, alleging that he has already once, in the past, purchased a fake Pakistani passport and that he gave it to his sister, Zaynab, for safekeeping. (No such passport was found when Zaynab was thoroughly searched by Canadian officials upon her arrival here last February.)

While Abdullah Khadr has since claimed that he was tortured whilst detained in Pakistan, it should be emphasized that the information he provided to interrogators overseas, including American terrorism investigators, is substantially the same as that which he gave to RCMP officers upon landing here, according to police affidavits; that he waived his right to a lawyer when interviewed by the FBI; and that he affixed his signature to every interrogation transcript produced.

It is utterly incomprehensible why Canadian law enforcement agents never charged Khadr themselves, since they had the same information at hand — a wealth of incriminating admissions that he allegedly made to investigators, with Khadr relating how he trained at an Afghan terrorist camp and went shopping for rockets and munitions at his father's request.

Whatever else their alleged crimes, it is clear that the Khadr children were all reared and psychologically disfigured in an atmosphere of religious and political extremism. As a family, they once spent a month living in bin Laden's Afghan compound and the Al Qaeda mastermind even attended Zaynab's wedding. It was this misbegotten alliance that eventually resulted in the family's multiple miseries: The violent death of a father and the grievous wounding of another young son in that battle (subsidized medical care is what brought the rump of the family back to Canada), yet another son captured and held still as the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay, the earlier detention of Abdurahman, the continuing surveillance of Zaynab.

It is their maternal grandmother, Fatmah Elsamnah, who took the stand yesterday, willing to offer herself — and a house valued at $300,000 house — as surety for Abdullah.

One can only imagine the pain of this entire family nightmare for Elsamnah, who is 66 years old and has been living in Canada for three decades. The woman professes complete ignorance of the Khadr clan's political entanglements and religious radicalism.

She claimed to know nothing of Abdullah's activities overseas, nor even of the crimes charged against him. But she was caught, embarrassingly so, in wild inconsistencies of fact, including that she knew nothing about the allegations against Abdullah until she read about them in a newspaper she'd picked up on the subway the other morning — despite having already signed an affidavit that contained references to the information he'd provided in his interrogation while imprisoned.

"I have a memory problem when I'm sad," she told federal prosecutor Robin Parker. "And now I'm really sad and upset."

Throughout most of his grandmother's testimony, Abdullah Khadr kept his head down, reading from what appeared to be the Qur'an.

He wore a long-sleeved T-shirt that declared: "For the future of Islam."

December 25, 2005 at 03:49 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home