Posted on 03/05/2004 3:49:08 PM PST by Indy Pendance
The Canadian, who was captured in Afghanistan, gave away Al-Qaeda hideouts and did undercover work
TORONTO - The son of an Al-Qaeda terrorist who was recruited to work for the United States has given a rare insight into the world of terrorist-hunting.
Mr Abdurahman Khadr, whose father was an Egyptian-born Canadian citizen, began working for the CIA after his capture in Afghanistan. Advertisement
The 21-year-old told Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) that he conducted what became known as 'the Abdurahman Tour' in Kabul.
'I took the people from the CIA, the FBI, the military,' he told the CBC in transcripts provided to The Canadian Press agency.
'We'd go around in a car in Kabul and I would show them the houses of Al-Qaeda people, the guest houses, the safe houses...I just told them what I knew.' He said the Central Intelligence Agency kept him in a safe house, where they made him an offer.
'They brought me a paper.
'They said US$5,000 bonus 'for you being very cooperative and from now on just by working with us, just answering our questions, you get paid US$3,000 a month, until you stop working for us'.' US$5,000 works out to about S$8,600.
Later, the CIA sent him to work undercover in Guantanamo Bay, where he was treated just like any other prisoner at the detention centre.
'For three months, I was in the general population,' he said. 'Their hope was when they take me to Cuba, they could put me next to anyone that was stubborn and that wouldn't talk and, you know, I would talk him into it.'
But his work there was largely unsuccessful.
Last September, he was given a false passport and sent to Bosnia.
He was told to blend in with the transient Muslim population in Sarajevo, then volunteer to go into Iraq with Al-Qaeda forces so that he could funnel information to the US military. While he was there, news arrived that his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, 57, had been killed by the military in Pakistan.
Mr Khadr said he had long resented his father for dragging the family into Al-Qaeda.
He said he was afraid and called his grandmother in Toronto, telling her that he desperately wanted to return home.
He told her to inform the media that the Canadian government was not helping him.
After the news broke in Canada, he was taken to a CIA safe house.
The Americans agreed to let him go and he promised not to tell any one of his CIA dealings.
But his brothers have not been so fortunate. Karim, 14, was wounded in the attack that killed his father and lies paralysed in a Pakistani military hospital while Omar is held at Guantanamo Bay.
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