Khadr Robbed Of His Cdn. Rights By The Us?

[Morgan]

Yet another media wail fest by the usual suspects [Toronto Star leading the charge of the intellectual lightweight brigade]concerning a Cdn. terrorist suspect who was allegedly mistreated by American authorities.

This case may become another cause celebre of the left wing media to further strain US/Cdn relations. Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting weary of reading the left's knee-jerk automatic defence of Arab terrorist suspects and flogging cases like Khadr's and Arar's as alleged examples of American mistreatment of Canadian citizens. Yet the same media have a limp wristed response or present no information at all about cases where innocent Arabs are routinely mis-treated by Arab terrorists and by Arab dictators. It's only okay to worry about Arabs' rights if there's a chance to demonize America. Why is it that Mr. Khadr and Mr. Arar should have automatic credibility in the eyes of the Toronto Star and CBC? Why is there no balance to their press reporting? Why does a person have to search out news in the National Post or Ottawa Citizen or Margaret Wente's columns to have all the dots of the picture presented? I think it's shameful that left wing journalists show such little respect for truth. Whether Arar or Khadr are innocent or guilty, I think it is not for the Toronto Star or the CBC and the left wing news cabal to reach decisions for the public. You've probably read the aforementioned news accounts about Khadr, so I'll provide news sources that provide the "other side."

a)Kadhr's story about Afghan training camp exposure is questionable

Afghan youth scoffed at Abdurahman Khadr's claim this week that his attendance at a notorious al-Qaeda facility in Kabul was nothing more than routine military training received by most Afghan youth during the Taliban regime.Mr. Khadr, a 20-year-old Canadian citizen born in Bahrain, was released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in October.After returning to Canada last weekend, he admitted at a news conference in Toronto that he spent three months in 1998 training at Khaldun -- Osama bin Laden's premier training camp in Afghanistan that attracted mainly non-Afghan Islamic radicals to fight a holy war against the United States."Everybody went to training camp in Afghanistan," he said on Monday at a lawyer's office in Toronto.Mr. Khadr said he learned how to use Russian assault rifles and that his older brother, Abdullah, had also trained, but he said that was "a very normal thing" and that many young men trained to fight the Northern Alliance rebels then at war with the Taliban.Khaldun Camp has been described by intelligence agencies and captured terrorists such as Ahmed Ressam of Montreal as an important terrorist training base for radical Arabs and Muslims from around the world.His father is Ahmed Siad Khadr, an Egyptian-born Canadian citizen who Canadian and U.S. intelligence believe is a bin Laden associate. His younger brother, Omar, 17, is still being held in Guantanamo Bay and has been accused of tossing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan last year. His brother Abdullah ran an extremist training camp in Afghanistan, said Canada's spy agency, CSIS.

Welcome back, Kadhr! by Margaret Wente

Abdurahman Khadr strikes you as many things, but traumatized is not one of them. At his press conference yesterday, the husky, healthy-looking 20-year-old aspired but failed to present himself as a victim. Mr. Khadr, who speaks colloquial English, is a Canadian citizen who claims that all he ever wanted to do was come home to Scarborough. But he hasn't really lived there for years. In the early 1990s his father, Ahmed, took the family to live in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There, Mr. Khadr would have us believe, his father was engaged in philanthropic works. Every so often they would return to Canada to raise money for good deeds. "We collect money for the orphans, the widows, all those people," he said with a straight face. In fact, Ahmed Khadr, an Egyptian by birth, has long been suspected of being an al-Qaeda operative. He was arrested in Pakistan in 1995, although never charged, on suspicion of having financed a bombing of the Egyptian embassy in which 17 people were killed. After 9/11 he was placed by U.S. authorities on the list of suspects involved in the terrorist attacks. In fact, Ahmed Khadr, an Egyptian by birth, has long been suspected of being an al-Qaeda operative. He was arrested in Pakistan in 1995, although never charged, on suspicion of having financed a bombing of the Egyptian embassy in which 17 people were killed. After 9/11 he was placed by U.S. authorities on the list of suspects involved in the terrorist attacks. Mr. Khadr had four sons. The oldest, Abdullah, is believed to have run an al-Qaeda training camp. Abdurahman is the second son. Omar, now 17, is alleged to have killed a U.S. army medic during the Afghan war, and was also sent to Guantanamo. It's expected that he'll be released soon. The fourth son, Karim, is reported to have died last month in a raid on an al-Qaeda camp near the Pakistan border, the Pakistanis say. He was 14. Mr. Khadr won't talk about his time in Guantanamo, on account of his brother, but he looks none the worse for wear. I have no idea why the Americans sent him to Afghanistan and not to Canada. Maybe it's because he lived there, not here. In any event, it took him only six weeks to get back to Scarborough, by way of Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Sarajevo. In spite of Mr. Khadr's claim that he was abandoned by his country, he was not. After he was captured in Kabul, he got a visit from an RCMP officer with the Canadian High Commission in Pakistan. Asked if he needed help, or wanted to return home, he said he wasn't interested. Even so, the Department of Foreign Affairs made strenuous efforts to have him shipped to Canada rather than to Guantanamo. Of the thousands of Canadians detained abroad at any given time, it's safe to say that very few have received more solicitous attention from the highest levels of government than Mr. Khadr. And in the end, who am I to say we shouldn't welcome him? I am perfectly prepared to believe that he is, as he says, no holy warrior. You can't condemn a man for the way he was brought up, or for who his father is. But I do wish he'd stop claiming he was captured for no reason other than "because I was Arab." Also, if I were him, I'd stop referring to my dad as an innocent philanthropist.

c) Mark Steyn on "Da brief is da brief or the Chretien-Khadr fiasco"

If you’re tired of all those sneers about Canadians being a bunch of wussies who like to sit out the great conflicts of the age, the Khadr family provide bracing evidence that it’s not so. Indeed, the Khadr cadre is Canada’s most vigorous contribution to the war on terror. True, they’re on the side of the terrorists, but that’s one of the great benefits of multiculturalism – celebrating your distinctive cultural identity ensures that, even as our official armed forces rust away, Canada’s likely to be represented somewhere among the warring parties. And say what you will about the Khadrs but at least they’re getting our name out around the world: in the tribal lands of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier, the family patriarch, Ahmed Said Khadr, is known simply as “al Kanadi” – the Canadian.As it happens, I wrote about Mr Khadr ten months ago, when I noted that he is “believed to be the highest-ranking Canadian citizen in al-Qaeda (at least until the late Osama’s Canadian passport is found in the ruins of one of those caves).” He's now back in the news because he and one of his offspring (Canadian born and bred) were thought to have been killed in a run-in with Pakistani forces in Waziristan the other day. It now seems that's not the case and the Canadian corps escaped to fight another day.Three of Mr Khadr’s four sons are known to be al-Qaeda members. One is with him on the run. Two are being held at Guantanamo.

d) Khadr's lawyer claims he is a "victim" too

Toronto Star claims Khadr's lawyer's life in danger for defending Khadr

The Toronto lawyer representing former terror suspect Abdurahman Khadr was close to tears today as he announced he would no longer handle such cases because he had received a death treat he's taking seriously. "I'm not on the verge of tears for my safety," a shaken Rocco Galati told a hastily called news conference. "I'm on the verge of tears because it means we now live in Colombia, because the rule of law is meaningless. It means that lawyers cannot represent anyone even in what you profess to be a democracy here in Canada." The call came one day after Galati held a news conference with Khadr, a Canadian citizen freed from a U.S.-run military prison in Cuba after two years in captivity. Galati had pressed the Canadian government to facilitate the return of Khadr to Canada. "The pigs know the mud they roll in," he[Galati] said. "Why do I know? I work in this area and any lawyer will tell you the same thing. They can tell a serious threat from a loon and this is a serious threat." Galati, with his lawyer, Paul Slansky, sitting beside him, said he believed the threatening message was from someone involved with a U.S. or Canadian intelligence agency. He added it was the third time he had heard the male voice and that one of his clients disappeared after one of the calls.

[Michael Hardner]

Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting weary of reading the left's knee-jerk automatic defence of Arab terrorist suspects and flogging cases like Khadr's and Arar's as alleged examples of American mistreatment of Canadian citizens

I agree with you. Didn't Khadr admit to attending an Al Quaida camp ?

The unfortunate situation with these terrorist suspects is that you can't release evidence to the public, because of security concerns. This means that we just have to trust our intelligence service to do the right thing.

Unless somebody has a better suggestion, I don't see how we have any other choice.

[KrustyKidd]

Maybe the government should warn people to stay away from terrorist training camps and if at all possible, not enroll in any of the programs.

What the hell is going on I wonder?

[Morgan]

KrustyKidd and Hardner,

News flash...maybe in the near future law enforcement authorities will not be able to do a darn thing about "peripheral" terrorism. A new judicial ruling in the USA, which may influence case law in Canada if it goes unchallenged, has concluded that aiding terrorism is not illegal.

This is just a skip away from "attending terrorist camps, not knowing they were for designed to teach a person how to commit terror"...one can see how a wily lawyer might use this case law to take a further jump in illogic.

Here's what the wacky 9th didtrict court in the USA just ruled...you better read this sitting down...

9th District Court says it's legal to abett terrorists

In a potential blow to the Bush administration's legal strategy in the war on terror, a federal appeals court has overturned part of a sweeping law the government has increasingly used to arrest or prosecute suspected terrorists.

The court struck down part of the law, ruling that it is unconstitutional to punish people, sometimes with life in prison, for providing "training" or "personnel" to a terror group.The ruling requires the government to prove that defendants knew their activities, such as donating money to outlawed groups, were actually contributing to acts of terror. In addition, the court wrote that it was unconstitutional to criminalize donations of personnel or training, which fall under the "material support" section of the law, because that "blurs the line between protected expression and unprotected expression."

The 1996 law has been used to prosecute high-profile suspects including accused British arms trafficker Hemant Lakhan, who was arrested in New Jersey and charged in August with providing material support in an alleged missile-smuggling plot.

Another case involved six Americans of Yemeni descent who were convicted under the law of providing "material support" to al-Qaida. Authorities described the six, who lived just blocks apart in Lackawanna, N.Y., as a sleeper cell awaiting orders from Osama bin Laden's network.

The first of the six, who attended an al-Qaida training camp and met bin Laden shortly before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, received 10 years in prison Wednesday, a sentence Attorney General John Ashcroft said "sends a clear message that the United States will seek strong penalties for those who provide material support to our terrorist enemies."

The Lackawanna case isn't governed by the 9th Circuit. Still, if it survives a Supreme Court appeal, Wednesday's decision in San Francisco could be a blow to Ashcroft's prosecution of that and other cases in the war on terror .

[SirRiff]

are we still talking about the same US gov that gave osama $3 Billion?

are we talking about the same gov that bought oil from saddam while he killed his own people, saudi arabia as they funded terrorists, and bribed iran with weapons?

lets see...credility of the US gov...near zero...

credibillity of this potential terrorist guy...unknown...

if i see a picture of him with bin laden, he is fried.

if he ran around in the desert when he was 14 with ak47s playing war, and DIDNY HURT ANYBODY AFTER THAT FOR HIS WHOLE LIFE, i will chalk it up to growing up in a rough part of the world.

i have spent some time in pakistan, and there are some places that make the worst parts of detroit or new york look like a 4 star hotel.

if you spent time with violent guys to gain protection, or make money, or pass the time, or join the army, whatever, thats one thing. to actually be a terrorist is another. the US has blurred the lines between terrorism and "national security" so many times they have no credability. its embarassing to hear american officials talk about the black and white of terorism when any high school essay can list numerous operations where teh US was only too happy to send billions to the very same people they are now accusing.

the last person who should be labelling people terrorists by association is the US. the should turn that evil eye on themselves sometime.

[Morgan]

Riff,

If you want to forgive someone that did this:

if he ran around in the desert when he was 14 with ak47s playing war, and DIDNY HURT ANYBODY AFTER THAT FOR HIS WHOLE LIFE, i will chalk it up to growing up in a rough part of the world.

...be my guest. That kind of person is not good citizenship material, in my opinion. Who says we need to take in all the hooligans of the world? Besides, M. Chretien has already done his bit to give a healthy number of terrorists a good home and drum up more LPOC voters....enough is enough...

Report states that Canada is a haven for terrorists, June 30/03, Vancouver Sun

Canada has allowed terrorists to move here, fund raise for their activities and violently repress others from their home countries who oppose them, according to a new study on terrorism.

The study from the Toronto-based Mackenzie Institute says 15 out of 80 identified international terrorist groups have members or significant supporters in Canada.

Among the groups are Sikh separatists like those accused of being responsible for the 1985 Air India bombing, violent supporters of the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers and members of the Islamic extremist group al-Qaida, which perpetrated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the United States.

"Instead of applying the new laws to terrorist groups in Canada, the use of a government list of selected groups is embarrassing," Thompson wrote.

But the biggest victims of terrorism in Canada are those who come from the same countries as the terrorist, according to the report.

"We have allowed agents of the violence experienced in other nations to come here, mercilessly dominate their fellows from their home societies and preach an Orwellian message that we must tolerate their intolerance and that it is racist and condescending to question their motives and actions.  

Worst still, some of our political leaders have accepted this message .

"The report says Canada must act immediately to restore the world's confidence in its ability to deal with terrorists."It is almost too late now," Thompson says in his report. "Our reputation as a full partner in protecting our friends and allies from terrorism has sometimes been called into question."

It's unlikely that Khadr is pure as driven snow, considering that his father is a big wig Al Qaeda in Afghan and his brother is currently in Guantanamo.

You can consider Americans as bad guys. I don't. Americans fought with us in 2 world wars. Terrorists haven't. Americans aren't blowing up innocent people at the Trade Centre, Bali, Iraqi Police Station, Red Cross and UN in Baghdad, apartment housing in Saudi Arabia. Terrorists have. We should be ashamed when a terrorist has Canadian citizenship.

Al Qaeda tape praises Canadian as a hero, a martyr, National Post Dec.06/03

Err, Sir Riff, btw, with terrorists, it's unwise to wait until the criminal act is done to prove guilt.

And thank goodness the USA isn't waiting for Canada to clean up its collection of terrorist dilitantes. Ambassador Cellucci just announced that the USA will continue to deport terrorist suspects to their homelands regardless of their Canadian passports. Good for the USA. Good for Canada.

[Galahad]

And thank goodness the USA isn't waiting for Canada to clean up its collection of terrorist dilitantes. Ambassador Cellucci just announced that the USA will continue to deport terrorist suspects to their homelands regardless of their Canadian passports. Good for the USA. Good for Canada.

I find is amusing that Canada claims that it "can't" deport many of it's undesirables because they can't get thier home country to "accept" them.

Why don't they just ask the US how THEY do it?

Somehow they managed to drop that Arar guy back in Afghanistan where they found him, without worrying about the paperwork, or caring about his citizenship.

We're a bloody nation of paperpushers here & the terrorists will take full advantage of our ineptitude.

[Morgan]

Via NealeNews and in the National Post today:

Cdn. and US intelligence officials 100% sure Arar trained at Al Qaeda camp, Nat'l Post Dec. 30/03

Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials are "100% sure" that a Syrian-born Canadian who was imprisoned for a year in Damascus trained at the same al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan as Ahmed Ressam, the former Montrealer convicted of planning a terrorist attack.

High-level sources in Canada and the United States who have had access to an extensive secret intelligence file on Mr. Arar say the 33-year-old Ottawa software engineer travelled to Pakistan in the early 1990s and then entered Afghanistan to train at the Khaldun camp.Osama bin Laden often visited the camp in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan where Western recruits were allegedly schooled in the use of explosives and suicide attacks."

This guy is not a virgin," said a senior Canadian intelligence source, speaking on background. "There is more than meets the eye here."

Officials say Paul Martin, the Prime Minister, has been extensively briefed on Mr. Arar's activities abroad and in Canada, suggesting this is why Ottawa backed off holding a full-scale public inquiry into his arrest and deportation by American authorities.

Officials say the RCMP had six officers at Montreal's Dorval Airport on Sept. 27, 2002, waiting for Mr. Arar's return from Tunisia through New York's JFK Airport.

But U.S. authorities arrested him at Kennedy Airport and then shipped him to Syria, which had shared intelligence on al-Qaeda operations with U.S. agencies, including suspected terrorist targets in Ottawa.

Canadian officials say the Americans made a mistake in deporting Mr. Arar, who was on an international terrorist watch list, rather than allow the RCMP to monitor his activities upon his return from Tunisia."The Americans made a hell of an error when they deported him to Syria. The better way to operate was to maintain the watch list," the source said.

Officials say U.S. agencies have an extensive dossier on him that raises serious questions."If the Americans were ever to declassify the stuff, there would be some hair standing on end," the senior source said.

Khaldun camp is where Ressam, an Algerian refugee claimant who lived in Montreal, trained. He was convicted of planning a terrorist attack after crossing into the United States from Canada with a car packed with explosives.Other graduates of the camp bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and were part of the suicide team that drove truck bombs to U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, killing 224 people.

a. Cdn. officials are finally admitting that they are 100% sure that Mr. Arar is an Al Qaeda operative.

b. The USA did not deport Arar to Canada because Canada would not take Mr. Arar into custody. Evidently the US had sufficient concerns about Mr. Arar's future plans that they decided "watching" him was a "been there, done that" ineffective protective measure.

c. It would appear that the USA had more worries about Ottawa being the likely terrorist target than the RCMP did. Hmmm...very interesting...

d. Blowhard Paul Martin has had a minute-by-minute debriefing on the dossier on Mr. Arar and yet he plays dumb to the media and pledges he will get to the bottom of the matter. Duh. Paul Martin knows the matter inside out, so what's with the silly anti-American posturing?

e. Kerry Pither, spokesman for the Arar family, accused the Canadian and American intelligence agencies of "smear" tactics against Mr. Arar.

Like the intelligence agencies of 2 countries have nothing better to do with their time than to pick on Mr. Arar... out of all the Muslim immigrants living in Canada and the USA, his name was singled out. Call me cynical but I have a very hard time believing this persecution theory. It does not make any sense whatsoever.

f. Mr. Arar says he confessed to Syrian authorities due to torture, but I've seen no medical evidence to support Mr. Arar's allegations of torture.

In fact, in a picture I saw of him and his wife in Macleans magazine a month ago or so after his release, he is either very photogenic or he regained the picture of health/ post torture look very quickly.

[Craig Read]

Galahad and Morgan - great posts. It always amazes how long its take Cdn officials to actually 1. Admit the truth and 2. Do something about it.

Cdns spend most of their time either denying any responsiblity or spinning reality so that they can wear their boy scout badges.

There are many posts on a good thread here on immigration and its problems. Fully 60-80 % [depends on the year] of immigrants are not here to work but here on refugee and family programs. Last year 20 % were here for work related reasons. The holes in security are rather obvious with such a pathetic system - but the political-legal complex makes too much money to give it up. Martin is just a fatter Chretien - no change in Canada please - we are too self satisfied to go through all that effort.

Canada is quickly deteriorating into a laughingstock - poor media, no army, no security, a 'who cares' immigration policy and social liberalism running amok.

Time to pull up the tent stakes and move.

[Brainiac]

I suspect the reason that the Canadian Government may have been keeping quiet about this case at the beginning is because of an ongoing investigation by the RCMP and CSIS into friends and associates of Mr. Arar. Him being arrested by the United States may have compromised an operation that the Canadian authorities had going on Mr. Arar and his cohorts. Not to mention it turned the whole thing into some political circus that the Canadian Government had no choice but to make some kind of stand on. Intelligence work is best done outside of the view of the public...the US arresting this man and sending him to Syria possibly screwed up a seemingly successful operation by forcing the issue into the eyes of the public. This damages intelligence sharing relationships between governments.

Watching a suspect is not a method used as a protective measure so much as it is an intelligence gathering measure. When you watch someone you have two goals. You are trying to determine what he is up to and how many people are in on this with him. Making sure he doesn't act out his plans is a by product of the surveillence. Intelligence Agencies purposly try to make themselves appear incompetent to an extent in the eyes of the public. That is a large part of their effectiveness. The US probably should not have arrested Mr. Arar for the simple fact that it probably alerted a number of sleeper agents he may have been working with. Some of these agents were probably known to Canadian authorities, but I bet there were ones that were not yet. Intelligence is a game that requires patience in order to win big. There is no place for politics in such a situation.