- "I think that everybody has a right to be scared
right now. Americans can catch you for no reason, put you away, not give
you a lawyer, not give you anything."
-
- Abdul Rahman Khadr admits learning to use assault weapons
at an "al-Qaeda related" training camp but insisted that such
instruction was routine for teens in war-torn Afghanistan.
-
- He said that the camp was run by Arabs and that some
graduates went on to fight the Northern Alliance and others travelled to
foreign wars in Bosnia and Chechnya. The camp was never visited by Osama
bin Laden while he was there, he said, and political instruction was not
part of the curriculum.
-
- Mr. Khadr - a Canadian citizen captured in Afghanistan
and held by U.S. authorities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than a year
- denied Monday that negative conclusions should be drawn from his training
at such a camp.
-
- He called the time he spent training "a waste of
my life" but stressed that it was perfectly normal for youths in Afghanistan
to learn to handle weapons.
-
- "Every kid, when he's around 15, goes to train,"
he said
-
- A few minutes later, badgered by reporters during a press
conference in Toronto, he lashed out in exasperation.
-
- "In the beginning, who were [the camps] made by?
Americans. Who were they made by? By the West. Because of the war against
the Russians in the very beginning, against the communists. It was very
normal thing, everybody was supportive of what was happening in the very
beginning when it was against communists," he said. "... Lots
of the people who trained at these camps, they were not al-Qaeda. They
[wanted] to come and fight against the Northern Alliance."
-
- Mr. Khadr, now 20, said that he had been handed over
to the Americans by a Northern Alliance commander - who, he said, detained
him solely because he was an Arab and might thus be connected to al-Qaeda.
After more than one year in the U.S. penal colony in Cuba he was told he
would be released.
-
- "I said I want to go to Canada, they said: 'Well,
the Canadians don't want to take you, so we're going to take you back to
where we captured you.'"
-
- Flown to Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, with his ears
and eyes covered, he was kept in complete isolation for the first 24 hours
after his arrival. Only when his earphones and blindfold were removed,
he said, did he realize that he was in Bagram, where he had been before.
He said that the Americans handed him over to Afghan intelligence, who
eventually released him.
-
- With no passport or money, he said he tapped old friends
of his father, people who had access to power and influence. He borrowed
enough money to be smuggled to Islamabad, where he was turned away by guards
at the Canadian embassy, and then on to Istanbul, where he was similarly
rejected. It was only in Sarajevo, after his plight had become public,
that he was received by Canadian diplomatic officials.
-
- A reporter tried to suggest that, since it was the security
guards and not the embassy officials who had spurned his pleas for help,
the Canadian government could not be accused of forsaking him. That line
of argument was blasted by Mr. Khadr's lawyer, Rocco Galati.
-
- "Those security guards are officials, they are the
gatekeepers to our embassy," he said, putting heavy emphasis on the
word 'our'.
-
- "I don't like these nonsense, disingenuous distinctions
between the persons at the door and the persons behind the door, if you
can't get behind the door it's the same thing. Those security guards are
Canadian officials."
-
- Mr. Khadr would say very little about his time in Cuba,
citing fears that going public about conditions there could jeopardize
his younger brother, Omar, who is being held on suspicion of having killed
a U.S. military medic.
-
- "I think that everybody has a right to be scared
right now. Americans can catch you for no reason, put you away, not give
you a lawyer, not give you anything," he said.
-
- "My brother is in Cuba, he's a juvenile, he's been
shot three times, he's half blind, he has to go to the hospital every two
weeks ... and I don't see Canada doing anything about it."
-
- The younger Mr. Khadr, who turned 17 in September, is
now believed to be the only Canadian remaining at Guantanamo Bay.
-
- © 2003 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
-
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