Posted on 02/05/2004 7:30:15 AM PST by quidnunc
The suicide bomber who killed Canadian Forces Corporal Jamie Murphy of Conception Harbour, Nfld., was a Canadian citizen, the son of al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Said Khadr, according to a Taliban spokesman who spoke yesterday from Afghanistan.
The spokesman suggested it was Abdullah Khadr who walked up to a Canadian patrol in Kabul on Jan. 27 and detonated a bomb. Abdullah is the eldest of four brothers and the only male member of the family who was not detained or shot as a terrorism suspect.
The Taliban account is being treated with much skepticism by Ottawa officials, who said it is not consistent with their information and that it may be misinformation.
Members of Abdullah Khadr's Toronto family deny he is a suicide bomber and described him as a "good boy," a 23-year-old stuck in Pakistan and wanting to return to Canada.
But sources suggest that investigators will try to match the bomber's DNA with that of Abdullah's father, killed by Pakistani counterterrorism agents in October.
Defence Minister David Pratt said Ottawa is looking into the case. "You have to keep in mind that the source here is apparently a Taliban member, and we take all of the information that they provide with a grain of salt. We want to check things out.
"I think we're going to need a lot more details and a lot more evidence from folks in Afghanistan," Mr. Pratt said.
A Taliban spokesman who called himself Mohammed Saiful Adel told Agence France-Presse that the bomber was "Mohammed Abdullah," the child of a Canadian citizen from Egypt and the brother of a young man held by the U.S. Army in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The spokesman described the father as a "fighter during the jihad [holy war] against the Soviets," who "spent a large part of his life in Pakistan and in Afghanistan" and was "killed during a recent operation by the Pakistan army against the village of Angoor Adda."
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(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
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