http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national ... hadr031016.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/khadr/timeline.html
The brother
Al-Qaeda Family: A family divided
CBC News Online | March 3, 2004
Abdurahman Khadr
In the city of Toronto, on the other side of the world from Pakistan, is 21-year-old Abdurahman, the self-proclaimed black sheep of the Khadr family. He was released from the American prison at Guantanamo last October and says he is now prepared to tell his full story for the first time.
"I want to show people that I'm a person that lived all my life as Ahmed Said's son," he says. "A person that was raised to become an al-Qaeda, was raised to become a suicide bomber, was raised to become a bad person, and I came out to become – you know… I decided on my own that I do not want to be that, and I do not want to be a Muslim that's so loose… I want to be a good, strong, civilized, peaceful Muslim."
Here lies the essential division in the Khadr family.
The mother and daughter in Pakistan support the al-Qaeda cause, but insist the family was never an accepted part of the terrorist organization.
"And you know what?" Zaynab says. "For the Americans we're al-Qaeda, for the al-Qaeda, we're Canadians. It's really weird where you end up. I swear, we were never accepted because you know, we're Canadians. They're the Canadians. They're the Canadians. Whatever thing we do different it's like, it's OK, they're the Canadians."
In Toronto, however, the dissident son Abdurahman describes the family differently.
"Until now everybody says that we're an al-Qaeda connected family, but when I say this, just by me saying it, I just admit it that we are an al-Qaeda family now. We had connections to al-Qaeda," he says. "My family in Pakistan, they will never admit this at all. Why? Because they're totally – you know – they are what they are and they deny it. They will never admit this."
This is the story of one Canadian family drawn in the mysterious and dangerous world of al-Qaeda because of the fundamentalist Islamic beliefs of the parents. Ahmed Said Khadr immigrated to Canada from Egypt in 1977. He met and married his wife, Maha, a Palestinian-Canadian who had spent much of her life in Ottawa. They started a family and eventually had six children.
In 1980, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Islamic scholars declared a jihad, or "holy war." Volunteers came from throughout the Muslim world to fight against the Soviets.
That's where Ahmed Said Khadr met Osama bin Laden. Shortly afterwards, he sent for his Canadian family to join him in Afghanistan. The rest of the Khadr family story runs in parallel to the history of al-Qaeda, the world's most dangerous terrorist organization.
Ahmed Said Khadr
Ahmed Said Khadr became known to Canadians in 1996, when he was arrested in Pakistan and accused of complicity in a terrorist bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, a bombing that killed 15 people. He went on a hunger strike and was interviewed by reporters in an Islamabad hospital. "I'm Canadian. I am 100 per cent innocent person," he said.
In January 1996, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was on a Team Canada trade mission to Pakistan.
Ahmed Said Khadr's wife and some of their children came to Chrétien's hotel in Islamabad to plead the case of her husband. The oldest son, Abdullah, who was 15 at the time, remembers his encounter with the Canadian prime minister.
"He told me that 'once I was a son of a farmer, and I became prime minister. Maybe one day you will become one.' That was a nice compliment."
Jean Chrétien raised the Khadr case with the Pakistani prime minister at the time, Benazir Bhutto, and within weeks, Ahmed Said Khadr was released. He resumed his life, which he claimed was devoted to charity work in Afghanistan.
He raised money in Canada that he said he was using to provide food and schooling to Afghan orphans.
U.S. and Canadian Intelligence sources, however, identified Ahmed Said Khadr as a close associate of Osama bin Laden.
Now for the first time, members of the Khadr family admit that bin Laden and Ahmed Said Khadr were old friends. They fought together during the Afghanistan war in the 1980s.
"They're old friends," Abdurahman says. "My father is one of those really old people. It's like, you know, you're having buddies from your school and stuff. So they're old friends. They meet a lot. My father really respects Osama and Osama really respects my father."
"They had their differences," Maha says. "But he respected him as a person, that is standing up for something he believes in and is willing to sacrifice for it, a man who is doing a lot of good for people who are helping him, these people who are keeping him in their country and he is helping them doing many things, so he respected him as a person and as a leader of his group or whatever he believes in. But we were never part of them."