Growing up Al Quedia, the long way home

Abdurahman Khadr is younger brother of Omar Khadr, who is currently on trail at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center for Murder and War Crimes he alledgedly commited when he was fifteen years old.  If found guilty he could receive life.

Abdurahman Khadr allowed Terrence McKenna an interview in 2004, yesterday in Growing up Al Quedia I pointed out some of the highlights of the McKenna interview form the time the Family left Canada and returned to Afghanistan, Abduraham was captured by the US, decided to work for the CIA and was send to Gitmo himself.  After some time in Gitmo, the CIA decided to send him elsewhere.. 





American Kids think they have it rough,

After some time in Gitmo, the CIA decided to send him elsewhere..





Bosnia


The plan to move you from Guantanamo to Bosnia, how did that come out? How did you find out about it and what did they tell you about it?

Well it started with, "where are we going to take him? Are we going to take him to the States, and then we'll give him the training there and then we take him to Bosnia?"


Anyway, there was so much talk. They decided "well, we're just going to take him to Bosnia. We'll take him to Bosnia and get him in the pipeline there. There's lots of Arabs in the Bosnia from the war that was in Bosnia. And those Arabs must know something about what's going on, where the pipeline is from Europe. We want him to meet some Arabs there and tell them his story, tell them who his father is and from there, go to Iraq." So it just came like this, you know, and one week before it, they told me I'm going to go to Bosnia and then, you know, the thing happened.


You found out just a week before?

Yeah. There was a long two-month period of planning -- where should I go, to the States, to this, to that, and then, you know, in one week, they told me you're going to Bosnia and in one week, we left.


What can you tell me about the CIA training course? …


They had [a] trainer, which is a very senior trainer, I found out from the CIA, come down to Cuba and he was with me for a week, I think, a week or two. Anyway, we started training with the normal things, mostly how to like do a dead drop. Or where you go and you check out a restaurant or a location to meet someone if you're like an agent, to meet your officer or if your officer wants to check out a place to meet an agent, so how you'd go. You go inside, you check the tables, you check the streets outside, you check, you know, the exits, the bathrooms, the location. The table exactly where you're going to sit. The weather it's going to be that time when you go to meet this person. Then the cultures of that area, people, do they shake hands, do they talk, are they nice, are they rude, do they like jokes? So to find out everything about this place you're going to. And you go meet one time and then you just, you know, you drop that place and go to the next place.


What did they tell you was your mission in Bosnia?


In Bosnia, they said just go to a mosque. They told me about this one mosque in Bosnia which is very famous for Arabs going there. It's a big mosque, [the King] Fahd Mosque, built by the Saudis. They said to go there. It was still Ramadan, so they said go in the mosque, meet some people, find someone and get contact.

So I did go to the mosque every now and then. I went to it like every two days or something, sit in the mosque until I found someone. I started talking to him, became friends. He was really, like really out, you know, outgoing and talk to me. He's really talking and all. I took his name and all and gave it to them and they said well this is a very good contact. They were very happy that I made this contact. They told me just to stay in touch with him and go slowly on him and then in due time, a week or two, tell him that you want to go to Iraq, you know, that you change your mind about going back to Canada, you want to go to Iraq. And that's when it all broke down and everything went wrong.



… How did the deal come apart?

Well this was right after I met this Arab person at the mosque and I told them about it, and they were really happy and they gave me money. And they told me, "you know what, you know, you can go enjoy yourself and stuff. You've been good, and don't waste it. Don't show anyone that you're celebrating but just go enjoy yourself and stuff, you know, and just stay in touch with this person."

I took the money and I went and I sat down and I was thinking about it and I just thought, you know what, I can't take this anymore. I don't want to go on living like this. I want a home. I want a family, you know. At points, I was in apartment in Bosnia, at points, for five or six days, I was alone. There was nothing, there was no one to talk to, there was no one to sit with. So I was alone and I just don't want this living. I just, I'm not a person that can live like this, you know. You know, and I thought you know what, I can't do this anymore. So I went [and] I called my grandmother.



If Al Qaeda people in Bosnia found out about you, what do you think would have happened?



They would have shot me.

No question in your mind.

No question in my mind. …



Return to Canada
In Bosnia you made this call to your grandmother. What happened?

When I met [the CIA] I told them I talked to my grandmother last night and she told me that she was going to talk and she was going to say everything. So they said let's see what happens.

So in the morning the news started coming out and we met again the next night. So he told me yeah, it's out in the Washington Post and in this and that. You need to move out of the house, the apartment you're living in. We're going to move you out today. They moved me out of there. They had two people stay with me until we moved all the stuff in the car and then we moved into a house. They were waiting to find a house we could stay in, a safe house. They found a safe house and I stayed in that house for two days and two nights until Saturday morning when I went out, when I went out to the embassy.


Why are you telling the story now?


Why am I telling the story right now? Because I do not want to keep this in my heart anymore. I cannot keep it in my heart anymore. I've got to tell people. I lied to them in the beginning and I want this to go out and I want the people to learn that I lied for a reason and I'm sorry to have lied [to] them and I want to tell them the real story, what really happened. …

That is all the truth there is to it. I couldn't make up a story so complicated and so complex like this and I wouldn't need to anyways. And I wouldn't need to go on TV and say, you know. But this is the real story of what happened to me from Sept. 11 until ..................


What are the consequences of you telling this story?

First of all my grandmother and my grandfather, where I stay right now, they're going to kick me out of the house. They will never admit what our family has gone through, what our family was and what we are. They will never admit it, first. My family in Pakistan


What was your reaction when you were first told that your father had been killed?


My reaction was, he's my father. There is now no change to that. So as my father I love him and I will always love him as my father but not as what he did. So when they told me he was dead, you know, I was sad because my father was dead, you know. My father had just been killed. I'm so sad that he was killed because he's my father and I don't have any other reaction to it, you know.

I mean through this two years I've seen so much. The day they told me -- it was CIA -- after I was released and the first time I got to Bosnia in the base they told me that your father was killed.


Your mother and your sister, how do you think they will react to your story?


They will totally deny it. They will totally deny it. They will totally be against it. They will dread me. My mother especially, she will dread me for doing this. She will totally dread me for doing this.


What will she say?

She'll say, "You left us. You sold out on your father. You sold out on your people. You know, you told a story, you know, you worked with the CIA, you did this and you did that."


What's going to happen to you now? Are you going to settle down?

I'm going to try to get back to my life, and that's what I'm trying to do right now. Again, there's the issue of my past is still hung on my back, so there's going to be a lot of, you know, pressure on me. And since you know, after this, there's going to be double that pressure on me because I still live with family. My family, as much as they do, they will always be my family. So when they find out that I've done all of this, that my thoughts are so different from theirs, you know, they're always going to be my mother and they're always going to be my grandfather and my sister and whoever. But this will change their mentality of me. They might deny me at all, get me out of the family. They might kick me out of the house, you know.



How do you feel about your brother now? Apparently he got a bullet in the spine and is paralyzed.


Again, another part of our family story. One brother was put away, which is me. One other brother was in a house and that house was bombed and he was almost killed. Another brother was shot in the spine. To my father and to my mother, this is the ultimate in being an Islamic family because to them, dying all of us in the war against America, you know, is just being the top family because we all died in a way, you know, in fighting against American you know. Can you ask for more than that?


The death of martyrs.

Yeah, you know. To me, it's just the story of a Canadian family that was normal and that, you know, somewhere, something gone wrong and then the family, the father gone, the kids gone and the whole family put through all this misery for no reason because you didn't do anything.




Editor's Note: FRONTLINE asked the CIA to confirm or deny Abdurahman Khadr's story but the agency declined to comment. However, Abdurahman did submit to a polygraph examination at FRONTLINE's request, in which he was asked about his work for U.S. intelligence, being paid for it and being flown on a small jet to Bosnia for his mission there. On all major aspects of his story, Abdurahman passed the polygraph.



Abdurahman's mother and brother Karim returned to Canada in April 2004 to seek medical attention for Karim, who was paralyzed in the attack that killed his father. The family has now begun to reconcile.


These were just some of the highlights of the Abdurahman Khadr interview with Terrence McKenna in  2004.  If you like a good spy story or ever wondered about what's going on behind the scenes in the CIA, Gitmo and other exotic places you'll enjoy reading the entire interview. I would strongly suggest anyone who has any interest in the terrorist threat to the United States read the entire interview. 

You can find it here

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/khadr/interviews/khadr.html