Posted on 03/13/2004 3:33:15 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
TORONTO -- Abdurahman Khadr can make a bomb, but he can't make cab fare.
Late for an interview, he calls to explain he is taking a taxi, but needs help paying for it. Minutes later, he steps out of the car onto Queen Street West, revealing himself as a tall, husky 21-year-old Arab with missing front teeth and empty pockets. He asks for the change from the taxi to buy a pack of Player's cigarettes.
The self-described black sheep of "an al-Qaeda family" of four brothersspent much of his teens in Afghan training camps. His father, Canadian terrorism suspect Ahmed Said Khadr, started Abdurahman young -- a decade ago, when he stood nowhere near the 6 feet 3 inches he is now.
"The first time I carried an AK-47 it was longer than me," he says. "I had to drag it on the ground."
Despite years of attempted indoctrination, Abdurahman has maintained a rebellious streak, a trait that he says caused him to turn informer after he was captured in Kabul in 2001.
He says the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used him as an infiltrator, leading to a series of spy adventures in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Bosnia.
But this is the extent of the education of Abdurahman Khadr, who returned to Canada last fall. Today, he finds that none of his training, as an al-Qaeda terrorist or as a CIA mole, is of much use in Toronto.
He speaks five languages but writes in a grade-school scrawl. He dreams of becoming a race driver but he is jobless and broke.
Alienation is a recurring theme, especially since he told his story to a nationwide TV audience last week. "Very little people are still left in my group of friends," he says. "Most people are like, 'He's a sellout, forget about him.' "
The Washington Post, the BBC, 60 Minutes and would-be biography publishers are calling on his pay-as-you-go cellphone, which rarely ceases ringing. However, as an admitted government spy, Abdurahman says he is persona non grata at the Toronto mosque he had attended.
Until last week, he lived with his grandmother. But since he recently turned on his family, she won't have him in her house.
Abdurahman says he can't understand the animosity. "I did something nobody has done until this day," he said. "Which is being the son of an al-Qaeda personality, and then coming back to oppose al-Qaeda, and then opposing the CIA . . . and then coming back here and telling the world what I did."
"I'm not pro al-Qaeda, I'm not pro-American," he said. "I'm pro the right thing to do."
But he's not quite able to figure out just where he belongs.
At 6 p.m. he sits down in a restaurant to order a well-done burger, which he smears with ketchup. He says it's his first meal of the day. As he eats, he speaks of the time his family spent in a compound with Osama bin Laden.
"He lived in a mud hut with everyone else," Abdurahman said. "The young guys would play volleyball against my father and Osama and all these old-school people."
The youth barely out of his teens said he's now telling all his secrets, though he lied about his past when he first came to Canada. To many people, the new story seems way too fantastic too be true.
Although no government agency has ever confirmed his account, his story gains credibility in light of what has happened to his family. "Unless I'm Stephen King's son, I couldn't make up such a story," Abdurahman said.
His father was born in Egypt. Ahmed Said Khadr immigrated to Canada in the 1970s and lived in Ottawa and Toronto. Radicalized by the 1980s Afghan struggle against the Soviets, he moved his wife and six children to the region, where he befriended Mr. bin Laden.
The father, an operative known as al-Kanadi (the Canadian), made headlines in 1995 as the suspected financier of a deadly bombing in Pakistan -- the same country where counterterrorism agents killed him last fall.
Karim Khadr, 14, the youngest son, was wounded in that fight and is trying to get home to Canada. The eldest Khadr son, Abdullah, is on the run as a terrorism suspect in Pakistan.
Abdurahman points to a curly-headed restaurant patron and says he looks just like his eldest brother, with whom he once shared an interest in cars. "But Abdullah's always been the safe driver," he said. "I have a dream of being a rally driver, that's my biggest dream in the world." Another Khadr brother, 17-year-old Omar, is demonstrating a reckless streak.
Held in Guantanamo Bay since being wounded and captured in an Afghan gun battle nearly two years ago, Omar has not been charged with any crime. But he may soon go on trial for killing a U.S. soldier in the battle.
Abdurahman, who says he spent months as a CIA mole inside Guantanamo Bay, said Omar has been admitting guilt to increase his popularity among fundamentalist detainees. "He's going around the camp and he's saying 'I did it. I killed an American,' " Abdurahman said.
"He's a kid. . . . He doesn't understand that this is maybe the gas chamber.
"Everyone around him is 'Be proud. You're going to heaven.' "
Despite all this, Abdurahman still has trouble believing his brother -- shot three times in the raid -- killed anyone. Nor does he believe his father was involved in the 1995 bombing. His own lack of battle wounds makes Abdurahman an anomaly in his family.
But he does remember watching U.S. cruise missiles rain down.
"That was an experience, I've got to tell you," he said, recalling the 1998 U.S. strike against an Afghanistan training camp in retaliation for al-Qaeda's embassy bombings in Africa. "I was there. Osama wasn't there. He left the camps five to 10 days earlier."
Then about 15, Abdurahman said he was left to pick up the pieces. "I collected all the body parts that were left. And I buried the people that died. And I was the person who drove the injured out to Khost."
One of the dead men, blown to smithereens, was a Vancouver man he knew well -- just one of several men from Canada that Abdurahman said he met in the camps. Despite this, "al-Qaeda will never hurt Canada," he said, arguing that while members might want to hide here, they would never identify the country as a target.
The talk of terrorism is frequently interrupted by cellphone calls. "I'm looking for one room, tops $300 a month. I don't care if it's with anyone else or whatever," he said to one caller.
Finally, a friend calls from a car parked outside the restaurant. It's time to go. The young man who has spoken of a lifetime of transgressions and intrigue asks only that one detail of the conversation go unreported.
And that detail is this: Abdurahman, who says he turned his back on his jihadist family, doesn't want it known that he ordered a Heineken with his hamburger.
France beckons.
That statement alone should reason enough to REMOVE the mosque. Its no longer a place of worship, or learning center of tolerance.
Oooh! A fat toothless guy with no money! I vote the other side keeps him...
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