CBC News Indepth: Khadr

INDEPTH: KHADR
Al-Qaeda Family: The black sheep
CBC News Online | March 3, 2004

For young Abdurahman Khadr, at age 14, the rigorous life of the bin Laden household was hard. He had spent time in Canada. He liked modern conveniences and the North American lifestyle. Before long, he started sneaking American products into the Jalalabad compound, including movies and music. It led to strains in his relationship with the bin Ladens.

"I'm the Canadian son because, you know, our family is not so strict in itself, so I like watching movies and, you know… as a normal kid, you know, but that wasn't okay with them," he says.

All the boys in the bin Laden compound were signed up for military training camps. Abdurahman and his older brother, Abdullah, were sent off to the infamous al-Qaeda camp at Khaladan Afghanistan. The training sessions continued on and off for years.

"Okay, the first time I went to training I was 11 and a half years old. I remember that. My brother was 12 and we went to Khaladan," Abdurahman says. "We took the first course, which is the assault rifles course. We stayed in the course for two months and then we went back to Pakistan. And then since like, I could say since '92 until 2003, I've been to Khaladan like five times. I took an assault rifle course, explosive-making course, snipers, pistols… and a course that includes all of these."

"I like my son to be brave. I mean as I was telling you, if I was in Canada, I would like my son to be trained to protect himself, to protect his home, to protect his neighbour, to really fight to defend it. I would really love to do that, and I would love my son to grow with this mentality," Maha says.

"So you should teach them to defend themselves and be able to fight for their rights and then to start to do everything else," Zaynab says.

"You would like me to raise my child in Canada and by the time he's 12 or 13 he'll be on drugs or having some homosexual relation or this and that. Is it better?" Maha says. "For me, no. I would rather have my son as a strong man who knows right and wrong and stands for it even if it's against his parents. It's much better for me than to have my child walking on the streets in Canada taking drugs or doing all this nonsense."

"Anyone who wants to get trained can get trained in Afghanistan. As long as you want to fire a Kalashnikov. It's like in Canada, going and learning hockey, anybody can do it . A 10-year old boy can fire Kalashnikov. So it's not a big deal," Abdullah says.

"I am famous in these camps. I got the most punishments in these camps," Abdurahman says. "I was always trouble. You know, not doing my homework, you know, running off, speaking to the Afghans. Being given punishment and not finishing off the punishment, you know. So I always had that rebelliousness in me. That was trouble for them because everybody, you know, in these camps are very strict. They're military camps you know. They didn't like me, but because of my father, they kept me."

Abdurahman would just run away, and you'd just find him home next day.

"I just had a fight. I'm not going back there again, no way you can ever get me back there again. And my father would get in the car and say, 'Abdurahman we're going back.' It was just back and forth all the time."

"They tried to put him in school. He'd run away. They tried to put him in Karachi in a Qur'an school, and he came back on the bus," Zaynab says.

"He tried to get him a job in Kabul and he is never on time," Maha says.

The rebellious behavior of Abdurahman in the bin Laden training camps became increasingly embarrassing for his father. There were intense arguments between father and son.

"Why do you not act like the rest of the kids, so Osama can, you know, can you know, always mention you and you could be a commander of a training camp or you can be something, you know. Why are you different, you know? And I would tell him, you know what, being Osama is not going to heaven, okay, and being Osama is not being, you know, like a movie star, you know. It's not the top of the world."

Abdurahman's refusal to be like the other al-Qaeda boys severely tested his relationship with his own father. Many young men in al-Qaeda were in training for what was considered the highest form of mission, to become a suicide bomber. Part of the training included religious instruction from radical Islamic scholars who told the boys that suicide bombing was sanctioned by Islam.

"Three times my father himself tried to get me to become a suicide bomber," Abdurahman says. "He sat me down with the al-Qaeda scholar, he sat me down with, you know, the person to train people to become suicide bombers. He sat me down with these two people and tried to convince me to become a suicide bomber. He's like, you know, you'd be our pride in this family, you'd be our pride, you know, if you do this. But I was totally against it. I was like I believe in fighting, you know, someone on the ground and he shoots me and I shoot him, you know. But I don't believe in blowing myself up, killing innocent people. I don't, I just don't believe in that… I just see that he [my father] really believed in it. And he wanted me to believe in it too."

Abdurahman's mother and sister claim they are not personally in favour of suicide bombing, but that they admire people willing to do it.

"I mean maybe we really respect those people. I think you must be a very brave person to be able to [know] I'm going to die," Zaynab says.

"No, not die, blow up," Maha says.

One of the first major al-Qaeda operations was the simultaneous bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998.

On that day, Abdurahman Khadr says he was in an al-Qaeda guest house in Afghanistan when the news of the bombings came in. "The leader of the guest house went outside and brought juice for like everybody – jugs and jugs of juice, just giving it out. Celebrate, everybody. And people were even making jokes that we should do this more often. You know, we'd get free juice."

As Abdurahman Khadr watched the video reports of the African embassy bombings, he says he did not feel like celebrating. When he heard that the bombing killed over 220 people, only 12 of them American, and injured over 5,000, he says he began to have severe doubts about al-Qaeda's methods.

"I thought it was horrible," he says. "I didn't think they had any right to kill all those people."

Abdurahman's mother and sister say that Osama bin Laden attacked the African U.S. embassies for a good reason.

"First of all, we thought why Kenya and Tanzania, and then they said it's the biggest CIA [station] in the Middle East," Zaynab says.

"To be honest with you, we hate the Americans moving around in our country," Maha says.

"And he [bin Laden] said before he did that, when he asked so many times, he said, look, every American will become a target," Zaynab says.

On Aug. 21, 1998, exactly two weeks after the African embassy bombings, the U.S. government retaliated. Cruise missiles were launched from U.S. Navy destroyers in the Arabian Sea. One of the targets was the bin Laden training camp near Khost, Afghanistan.

Abdurahman Khadr says he was in the camp when the cruise missiles arrived. He was with an acquaintance from Canada.

"I noticed something in the sky," he says. "There was something that was like lightning and you know, flashing. There was like three, four camps around the area. Jihad Wel was the one they thought Osama was in so they started bombing it."

[At the time the Pentagon and news reports said the camp was known as Zhawar Kili al-Badr. It was about 150 kilometres from Kabul, a few kilometres from the Pakistani border.]

"There were just explosives going around everywhere… after everything was done, I was the one that drove the injured people because there was like almost five, six injured people. I drove back to Khost. Took them to the hospital, then came back – came back to find out the Canadian person that I was with was killed and nothing was found of his body except his legs.

Later, some documents found in the ruins of an al-Qaeda guest house related to that Canadian killed in the missile attack. He was Amur M. Hamed of 4U Enterprises in British Columbia.

On the night he sent cruise missiles into the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, U.S. President Bill Clinton said the target was Osama bin Laden. The 1998 missile attacks temporarily brought Abdurahman Khadr back into the fold of al-Qaeda true believers.

"I really hated Americans that day, when we were bombed," he says. "All these people were killed and we were up on the mountain with guns, and we were just waiting for American soldiers to come down the mountain. I was like just waiting for them, we're going to shoot as much of them as we can, you know. We've been bombed and we felt that… we wanted them to come because they wanted to have an American to kill… because [to] kill an American [was] good thing. Get killed by an American, you're a shaheed, you know, a martyr in Islam."

After the cruise missile attacks against the training camps in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda threatened revenge against the United States.

According to Abdurahman's mother and sister, the thirst for revenge in the organization was intense.

"I don't know your people, but assume it was your son or your wife who had been slaughtered right in front of you, would you feel proud? You feel angry? You feel like you want to take revenge," Maha says. "I know, maybe in the West people are very cool, they take it very coldly, if a child is raped, or being killed. In Afghanistan, in the tribal areas, people have respect for revenge. They will take revenge even if it's their cousin. They will take revenge."

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