Dana
2004-10-27 05:09:11 UTC
http://www.meforum.org/article/pipes/1639
[The Khadrs:] Canada's First Family of Terrorism
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
"We are an Al Qaeda family." So spoke one of the Khadrs, a Muslim Canadian
household whose near single-minded devotion to Osama bin Laden contains
important lessons for the West.
Their saga began in 1975, when Ahmad Said al-Khadr left his native Egypt for
Canada and soon after married a local Palestinian woman. He studied computer
engineering at the University of Ottawa and engaged in research for a major
telecommunications firm. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Khadr
went to work for Human Concern International, an Ottawa-based charity
founded in 1980 with the purported aim to "alleviate human suffering," but
with a record of promoting militant Islam.
In 1985, in the course of working in Afghanistan, Khadr met bin Laden and
became his close associate. Sometimes Khadr was described as the highest
ranking of Al Qaeda's 75 Canadian operatives.
The federal Canadian government, living up to its naïve reputation,
contributed $325,000 in Canadian dollars to HCI. From 1988 to 1997 in
particular, HCI was simultaneously receiving Canadian taxpayer funding and
working with Al Qaeda.
The bureaucratic ingénues in Ottawa continued to find nothing wrong with
Khadr even after his arrest by Pakistani authorities in 1995 for siphoning
off HCI funds to pay for an Al Qaeda terrorist operation that year - an
attack on the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan, which killed 18. Quite the
contrary, Canada's prime minister, Jean Chrétien took advantage of a state
visit to Pakistan to intercede with his Pakistani counterpart on Khadr's
behalf.
This highly unusual step succeeded; Khadr was soon released, and returned to
Canada. In 1996, he and his wife set up an Islamic charity they named
"Health and Education Project International." When the Taliban took control
in Afghanistan a few months later, the parents and their six children
decamped there. As he worked closely with bin Laden, Khadr became known for
his militant Islamic vitriol, leading one Frenchman in Afghanistan to
observe about him," I never met such hostility, someone so against the
West."
Like other Al Qaeda leaders, Khadr disappeared from view soon after 9/11. He
spent two years on the lam, reappearing only in October 2003,when Pakistani
forces unexpectedly found that the DNA of one unrecognizable corpse from a
bloody shootout matched Khadr's.
The terrorism-related activities of other Khadr family members - wife, one
of two daughters, three of four sons - complement their patriarch's record.
Wife Maha Elsamnah took her then 14-year-old son Omar from Canada to
Pakistan in 2001 and enrolled him for Al Qaeda training.
Daughter Zaynab, 23, was engaged to one terrorist and married, with Osama
bin Laden himself present at the nuptials, a Qaeda member in 1999. Zaynab
endorses the 9/11 atrocities and hopes her infant daughter will die fighting
Americans.
Son Abdullah, 22, is a Qaeda fugitive constantly on the move to elude
capture. Canadian intelligence states he ran a Qaeda training camp in
Afghanistan during the Taliban period, something Abdullah denies.
Son Omar, 17, stands accused of hurling a grenade in July 2002, killing an
American medic in Afghanistan. Omar lost sight in one eye in the fighting
and is now a U.S. detainee in Guantánamo.
Son Abdul Karim, 14, half-paralyzed by wounds sustained in the October 2003
shoot-out that left his father dead, is presently prisoner in a Pakistani
hospital.
Fortunately, there is also one positive story:
Son Abdurahman, 21, reluctantly trained with Al Qaeda, was captured by
coalition forces in November 2001 and agreed to work for the Central
Intelligence Agency in Kabul, Guantánamo, and Bosnia. He returned to Canada
in October 2003, where he denounced both extremism ("I want to be a good,
strong, civilized, peaceful Muslim" ) and his family's terroristic ways.
While an unusual case, the Khadr family's horrifying history serves as a
warning, pointing to the danger of Muslim parents in North America and
Europe who stray so deeply into militant Islamic currents that,
Palestinian-style, they seek to turn their children into militant Islamic
weapons to be turned against their own countries.
This pattern is yet rare, but it might well become more widespread as the
second generation of Islamist children in the West comes of age. The key in
the Khadr case, as it will likely be for others, is isolation within a
militant Islamic environment - schools, press, social life. Preventing such
self-segregation must be an urgent policy goal throughout the West.
April 9, 2004 update: Maha Elsamnah may have taken her then-14-year-old son
Omar from Canada to Pakistan in 2001 and enrolled him for Al-Qaeda training
but today she returned with another teenage son, Abdul Karim, from Pakistan
to Canada. "The teen flashed a peace sign as his wheelchair was guided past
a throng of reporters," the Canadian Press informs us. The Globe and Mail
today quotes Khadr family members saying that if Abdul Karim is ever going
to walk properly again, it will through the efforts of the Canadian
health-care system. To mark the occasion of their return, the Globe and Mail
quotes Elsamnah insisting just a month ago that Al-Qaeda-sponsored training
camps were the best place for her children. "Would you like me to raise my
child in Canada to be, by the time he's 12 or 13 years old, to be on drugs
or having some homosexual relationship? Is it better?"
April 10, 2004 update: In response to the admission of the Khadrs to Canada,
concerned citizens by the thousands are signing a "Deport the Khadr Family"
petition. [And April 19, 2004 update: The petition has mysteriously
disappeared and its author, who initially notified me of its existence, does
not reply to questions as to what happened.]
April 14, 2004 update: The National Post reveals today that Omar Khadr - the
son held at Guantánamo - wrote one or more of the 186 letters that Senior
Airman Ahmad al-Halabi was allegedly smuggling out of the base and intending
to deliver to someone in Syria.
April 16, 2004 update: The Globe and Mail reports that Prime Minister Paul
Martin has said the Khadrs can call Canada home despite their past ties to
Osama bin Laden, despite many demands that the Toronto family be stripped of
its Canadian citizenship. "When you break the law or obviously threaten the
nation, then there are means to dealing with that and obviously [the
government] would exercise those means-but fundamentally, there are rights
of citizenship."
Rejoicing in the family's citizenship, Elsamnah said she picked up
health-care forms for Abdul Karim. "We've just been to the [Ontario Health
Insurance Plan] office. That's it. They said we have to fill out forms." She
added said her son will have trouble waiting out the three-month residency
term required to qualify for publicly funded health care. Elsamnah added:
"I'm proud of what we are and I'm proud we're in Canada now. Believe me, I
will not force myself on anyone as a Canadian citizen. . . . I'm demanding
for my kids? Is that wrong? Is that a crime?"
Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman confirmed that the family is
entitled to publicly-funded health care.
April 20, 2004 update: Ah, the liberal pieties of the nanny state. Here is a
woman, Maha Elsamnah, who has worked closely with bin Laden, endorsed his
brand of Islam, and encouraged her children to engage in terrorism, and what
do the Canadian authorities get exorcised about? Child abuse. Yup, child
abuse. The National Post reports that the Children's Aid Society of Toronto
commissioned a study by a psychologist, Marty McKay, on the young Abdul
Karim. She expects he is suffering multiple mental problems. "I'd be
surprised if the child wasn't suffering from two or three disorders, be it
anxiety or depression suffered by the loss of family members and the fact
he's been paralyzed. Psychologically, I'm sure he's quite a mess." And this
sentence in the National Post dispatch is unforgettable: "Since Canada has
legislated aggressive spankings as child abuse, the 14-year-old's
involvement with terrorists and his brush with violent death could cause his
mother serious legal complications."
May 15, 2004 update: The Khadrs just won't go away. Today, we learn in the
National Post and the Globe and Mail that Abdurahman Khadr, the 21-year-old
"good" son, is taking the Canadian federal government to court for not
issuing him a passport. His draft affidavit states that he wants to visit
relatives in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and explore job opportunities
in the United States. "I am the only Canadian I know who has been denied a
passport and it makes me feel like a second-class citizen," Mr. Khadr
writes. "I do not know why the Canadian government is treating me this way."
May 19, 2004 update: In an interview with the National Post's Stewart Bell,
the talkative Khadr daughter, Zaynab (picture below) opines from her perch
in Islamabad. Some of her views:
We're not al-Qaeda. We respect them, we've had some interactions with them,
we disagreed with them and we just wanted to go to live along side-by-side
helping each other in whatever way we can.
Osama didn't say that Americans should evacuate America or else we'd kill
them. He just said this is our country and we would like you to leave, and I
think he has a right.
If I was to choose for my daughter to live a life of no meaning or to die a
martyr, I would choose for her to die a martyr.. I'd love to die a martyr.
It's a desire that I believe that any Muslim would have or should have.
My mother's raised six completely perfect children in all ways.... The way
you think does not give anybody the right to take away your child.
I'm not saying suicide bombing is the best thing ... [but] these people who
go and kill themselves are doing it for a reason. They are trying to tell
the world something. They have been trying to say it for a long time. It's
just people won't listen, so sometimes you just have to do things in a way
you don't like because it's the only way left.
I have nothing against the Canadians. We always thought the Canadians were a
lot more, what should I say, stable. I mean, I used to think the Americans
were too arrogant. But we always thought the Canadians were more human, more
down to Earth. But what they're doing right now seems to be just obeying the
orders of the Americans.
July 6, 2004 update: Lawyers acting on Omar Khadr's behalf, reports the
National Post today, have filed a 16-page petition in a U.S. court denying
he was a member of Al-Qaeda or that he killed an American soldier in
Afghanistan (he "did not cause or attempt to cause any harm to American
personnel or property prior to his capture," it states).
In contrast, Omar's older siblings have openly admitted the family's ties to
Al-Qaeda; and the U.S. military holds that Omar Khadr's capture within an
Al-Qaeda compound came after a fierce gun battle; and that he threw a
grenade that killed a U.S. Army medic.
More than proclaiming his innocence, the Guantánamo Bay detainee has turned
the tables and claimed his detention is unlawful because he has "no military
or terrorist training, nor has he at any time voluntarily joined any
terrorist force." On this basis, he seeks unspecified monetary damages from
the U.S. government for "any physical or psychological abuse or agony he has
suffered" during his detention. In particular, the petition claims Omar has
been forced to "provide involuntary statements" and "was initially forced to
use a bucket for a toilet, and was not provided with basic hygienic
facilities."
July 12, 2004 update: The Globe and Mail reports that Foreign Affairs
Minister Bill Graham has, for security reasons, resorted to the rarely used
royal prerogative to keep Abdurahman Khadr, a former Guantánamo Bay
detainee, from acquiring a passport in the spring and leaving Canada. Khadr
in turn, according to his lawyer, is planning to appeal the move as a
fundamental breach of his rights.The Globe and Mail explains that
Canada is a constitutional monarchy and ministers can use royal, or Crown,
prerogative - the monarch's historical powers that haven't been superceded
by statutes passed in Parliament. In Canada, only a few day-to-day
operations of government exist within this ambit - passports among them. And
while the governor-general uses the power for time-honored traditions, such
as dissolving Parliament, Crown ministers rarely use it to address
particular problems. "The exercise of prerogative by cabinet or by
individual ministers is rare," said Peter Hogg, a former Osgoode Hall dean
and a leading constitutional expert. He called the case "quite unusual."
Graham acted in this manner because a March 2004 memo from the Passport
Office concluded that "National interests and national security are not
listed in the Canadian Passport Order as grounds for refusal of passport
services. This limitation," it went on, "constrains passport officials, but
does not constrain the Crown." The Passport Office urged Graham to use Crown
prerogative to reject any passport application by Abdurahman Khadr "in the
interest of the national security of Canada and the protection of Canadian
troops in Afghanistan."
Comment: In addition to this new twist in the ongoing Khadr saga, the resort
to royal prerogative fits another issue I am documenting, namely "Islam
Driving the Social and Legal Agenda."
August 6, 2004 update: The Khadrs, even dead, cannot stay out of the news.
Today's National Post reports that the widow of Sergeant 1st Class
Christopher J. Speer, a U.S. soldier who was killed on July 27, 2002 in a
battle with al-Qaeda, is suing the late Ahmed Said Khadr for US$10-million
in damages for his son Omar's allegedly tossing a grenade at him. The suit
was filed today in the U.S. Federal District Court of Utah, with lead
plaintiff his widow, Tabitha Speer. The wrongful death claim holds that the
estate of Khadr senior should compensate Mrs. Speer for Omar's actions
because the father preached Islamist values to Omar. "We're suing the father
for the acts of the son," said Donald Winder, lead lawyer for the lawsuit. A
draft version of the lawsuit, which will be filed in court this morning,
argues that "Khadr had a duty as a parent to exercise reasonable care to
control" Omar. "Khadr breached that duty, and in fact coerced, aided,
instructed and promoted his minor child, Omar Khadr, to commit violent,
dangerous and criminal acts of international terrorism."
Omar's lawyers recently filed a petition in another U.S. court (see July 6,
2004 update, above), asserting that he did not kill Speer. The Speer-led
suit targets Ahmed Said Khadr's assets blocked or frozen by Canadian and
American authorities, though no one outside the government has any idea what
they are worth. "It could be $10," Mr. Winder said. "It could be $10,000. It
could be $110,000."
[The Khadrs:] Canada's First Family of Terrorism
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
"We are an Al Qaeda family." So spoke one of the Khadrs, a Muslim Canadian
household whose near single-minded devotion to Osama bin Laden contains
important lessons for the West.
Their saga began in 1975, when Ahmad Said al-Khadr left his native Egypt for
Canada and soon after married a local Palestinian woman. He studied computer
engineering at the University of Ottawa and engaged in research for a major
telecommunications firm. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Khadr
went to work for Human Concern International, an Ottawa-based charity
founded in 1980 with the purported aim to "alleviate human suffering," but
with a record of promoting militant Islam.
In 1985, in the course of working in Afghanistan, Khadr met bin Laden and
became his close associate. Sometimes Khadr was described as the highest
ranking of Al Qaeda's 75 Canadian operatives.
The federal Canadian government, living up to its naïve reputation,
contributed $325,000 in Canadian dollars to HCI. From 1988 to 1997 in
particular, HCI was simultaneously receiving Canadian taxpayer funding and
working with Al Qaeda.
The bureaucratic ingénues in Ottawa continued to find nothing wrong with
Khadr even after his arrest by Pakistani authorities in 1995 for siphoning
off HCI funds to pay for an Al Qaeda terrorist operation that year - an
attack on the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan, which killed 18. Quite the
contrary, Canada's prime minister, Jean Chrétien took advantage of a state
visit to Pakistan to intercede with his Pakistani counterpart on Khadr's
behalf.
This highly unusual step succeeded; Khadr was soon released, and returned to
Canada. In 1996, he and his wife set up an Islamic charity they named
"Health and Education Project International." When the Taliban took control
in Afghanistan a few months later, the parents and their six children
decamped there. As he worked closely with bin Laden, Khadr became known for
his militant Islamic vitriol, leading one Frenchman in Afghanistan to
observe about him," I never met such hostility, someone so against the
West."
Like other Al Qaeda leaders, Khadr disappeared from view soon after 9/11. He
spent two years on the lam, reappearing only in October 2003,when Pakistani
forces unexpectedly found that the DNA of one unrecognizable corpse from a
bloody shootout matched Khadr's.
The terrorism-related activities of other Khadr family members - wife, one
of two daughters, three of four sons - complement their patriarch's record.
Wife Maha Elsamnah took her then 14-year-old son Omar from Canada to
Pakistan in 2001 and enrolled him for Al Qaeda training.
Daughter Zaynab, 23, was engaged to one terrorist and married, with Osama
bin Laden himself present at the nuptials, a Qaeda member in 1999. Zaynab
endorses the 9/11 atrocities and hopes her infant daughter will die fighting
Americans.
Son Abdullah, 22, is a Qaeda fugitive constantly on the move to elude
capture. Canadian intelligence states he ran a Qaeda training camp in
Afghanistan during the Taliban period, something Abdullah denies.
Son Omar, 17, stands accused of hurling a grenade in July 2002, killing an
American medic in Afghanistan. Omar lost sight in one eye in the fighting
and is now a U.S. detainee in Guantánamo.
Son Abdul Karim, 14, half-paralyzed by wounds sustained in the October 2003
shoot-out that left his father dead, is presently prisoner in a Pakistani
hospital.
Fortunately, there is also one positive story:
Son Abdurahman, 21, reluctantly trained with Al Qaeda, was captured by
coalition forces in November 2001 and agreed to work for the Central
Intelligence Agency in Kabul, Guantánamo, and Bosnia. He returned to Canada
in October 2003, where he denounced both extremism ("I want to be a good,
strong, civilized, peaceful Muslim" ) and his family's terroristic ways.
While an unusual case, the Khadr family's horrifying history serves as a
warning, pointing to the danger of Muslim parents in North America and
Europe who stray so deeply into militant Islamic currents that,
Palestinian-style, they seek to turn their children into militant Islamic
weapons to be turned against their own countries.
This pattern is yet rare, but it might well become more widespread as the
second generation of Islamist children in the West comes of age. The key in
the Khadr case, as it will likely be for others, is isolation within a
militant Islamic environment - schools, press, social life. Preventing such
self-segregation must be an urgent policy goal throughout the West.
April 9, 2004 update: Maha Elsamnah may have taken her then-14-year-old son
Omar from Canada to Pakistan in 2001 and enrolled him for Al-Qaeda training
but today she returned with another teenage son, Abdul Karim, from Pakistan
to Canada. "The teen flashed a peace sign as his wheelchair was guided past
a throng of reporters," the Canadian Press informs us. The Globe and Mail
today quotes Khadr family members saying that if Abdul Karim is ever going
to walk properly again, it will through the efforts of the Canadian
health-care system. To mark the occasion of their return, the Globe and Mail
quotes Elsamnah insisting just a month ago that Al-Qaeda-sponsored training
camps were the best place for her children. "Would you like me to raise my
child in Canada to be, by the time he's 12 or 13 years old, to be on drugs
or having some homosexual relationship? Is it better?"
April 10, 2004 update: In response to the admission of the Khadrs to Canada,
concerned citizens by the thousands are signing a "Deport the Khadr Family"
petition. [And April 19, 2004 update: The petition has mysteriously
disappeared and its author, who initially notified me of its existence, does
not reply to questions as to what happened.]
April 14, 2004 update: The National Post reveals today that Omar Khadr - the
son held at Guantánamo - wrote one or more of the 186 letters that Senior
Airman Ahmad al-Halabi was allegedly smuggling out of the base and intending
to deliver to someone in Syria.
April 16, 2004 update: The Globe and Mail reports that Prime Minister Paul
Martin has said the Khadrs can call Canada home despite their past ties to
Osama bin Laden, despite many demands that the Toronto family be stripped of
its Canadian citizenship. "When you break the law or obviously threaten the
nation, then there are means to dealing with that and obviously [the
government] would exercise those means-but fundamentally, there are rights
of citizenship."
Rejoicing in the family's citizenship, Elsamnah said she picked up
health-care forms for Abdul Karim. "We've just been to the [Ontario Health
Insurance Plan] office. That's it. They said we have to fill out forms." She
added said her son will have trouble waiting out the three-month residency
term required to qualify for publicly funded health care. Elsamnah added:
"I'm proud of what we are and I'm proud we're in Canada now. Believe me, I
will not force myself on anyone as a Canadian citizen. . . . I'm demanding
for my kids? Is that wrong? Is that a crime?"
Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman confirmed that the family is
entitled to publicly-funded health care.
April 20, 2004 update: Ah, the liberal pieties of the nanny state. Here is a
woman, Maha Elsamnah, who has worked closely with bin Laden, endorsed his
brand of Islam, and encouraged her children to engage in terrorism, and what
do the Canadian authorities get exorcised about? Child abuse. Yup, child
abuse. The National Post reports that the Children's Aid Society of Toronto
commissioned a study by a psychologist, Marty McKay, on the young Abdul
Karim. She expects he is suffering multiple mental problems. "I'd be
surprised if the child wasn't suffering from two or three disorders, be it
anxiety or depression suffered by the loss of family members and the fact
he's been paralyzed. Psychologically, I'm sure he's quite a mess." And this
sentence in the National Post dispatch is unforgettable: "Since Canada has
legislated aggressive spankings as child abuse, the 14-year-old's
involvement with terrorists and his brush with violent death could cause his
mother serious legal complications."
May 15, 2004 update: The Khadrs just won't go away. Today, we learn in the
National Post and the Globe and Mail that Abdurahman Khadr, the 21-year-old
"good" son, is taking the Canadian federal government to court for not
issuing him a passport. His draft affidavit states that he wants to visit
relatives in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and explore job opportunities
in the United States. "I am the only Canadian I know who has been denied a
passport and it makes me feel like a second-class citizen," Mr. Khadr
writes. "I do not know why the Canadian government is treating me this way."
May 19, 2004 update: In an interview with the National Post's Stewart Bell,
the talkative Khadr daughter, Zaynab (picture below) opines from her perch
in Islamabad. Some of her views:
We're not al-Qaeda. We respect them, we've had some interactions with them,
we disagreed with them and we just wanted to go to live along side-by-side
helping each other in whatever way we can.
Osama didn't say that Americans should evacuate America or else we'd kill
them. He just said this is our country and we would like you to leave, and I
think he has a right.
If I was to choose for my daughter to live a life of no meaning or to die a
martyr, I would choose for her to die a martyr.. I'd love to die a martyr.
It's a desire that I believe that any Muslim would have or should have.
My mother's raised six completely perfect children in all ways.... The way
you think does not give anybody the right to take away your child.
I'm not saying suicide bombing is the best thing ... [but] these people who
go and kill themselves are doing it for a reason. They are trying to tell
the world something. They have been trying to say it for a long time. It's
just people won't listen, so sometimes you just have to do things in a way
you don't like because it's the only way left.
I have nothing against the Canadians. We always thought the Canadians were a
lot more, what should I say, stable. I mean, I used to think the Americans
were too arrogant. But we always thought the Canadians were more human, more
down to Earth. But what they're doing right now seems to be just obeying the
orders of the Americans.
July 6, 2004 update: Lawyers acting on Omar Khadr's behalf, reports the
National Post today, have filed a 16-page petition in a U.S. court denying
he was a member of Al-Qaeda or that he killed an American soldier in
Afghanistan (he "did not cause or attempt to cause any harm to American
personnel or property prior to his capture," it states).
In contrast, Omar's older siblings have openly admitted the family's ties to
Al-Qaeda; and the U.S. military holds that Omar Khadr's capture within an
Al-Qaeda compound came after a fierce gun battle; and that he threw a
grenade that killed a U.S. Army medic.
More than proclaiming his innocence, the Guantánamo Bay detainee has turned
the tables and claimed his detention is unlawful because he has "no military
or terrorist training, nor has he at any time voluntarily joined any
terrorist force." On this basis, he seeks unspecified monetary damages from
the U.S. government for "any physical or psychological abuse or agony he has
suffered" during his detention. In particular, the petition claims Omar has
been forced to "provide involuntary statements" and "was initially forced to
use a bucket for a toilet, and was not provided with basic hygienic
facilities."
July 12, 2004 update: The Globe and Mail reports that Foreign Affairs
Minister Bill Graham has, for security reasons, resorted to the rarely used
royal prerogative to keep Abdurahman Khadr, a former Guantánamo Bay
detainee, from acquiring a passport in the spring and leaving Canada. Khadr
in turn, according to his lawyer, is planning to appeal the move as a
fundamental breach of his rights.The Globe and Mail explains that
Canada is a constitutional monarchy and ministers can use royal, or Crown,
prerogative - the monarch's historical powers that haven't been superceded
by statutes passed in Parliament. In Canada, only a few day-to-day
operations of government exist within this ambit - passports among them. And
while the governor-general uses the power for time-honored traditions, such
as dissolving Parliament, Crown ministers rarely use it to address
particular problems. "The exercise of prerogative by cabinet or by
individual ministers is rare," said Peter Hogg, a former Osgoode Hall dean
and a leading constitutional expert. He called the case "quite unusual."
Graham acted in this manner because a March 2004 memo from the Passport
Office concluded that "National interests and national security are not
listed in the Canadian Passport Order as grounds for refusal of passport
services. This limitation," it went on, "constrains passport officials, but
does not constrain the Crown." The Passport Office urged Graham to use Crown
prerogative to reject any passport application by Abdurahman Khadr "in the
interest of the national security of Canada and the protection of Canadian
troops in Afghanistan."
Comment: In addition to this new twist in the ongoing Khadr saga, the resort
to royal prerogative fits another issue I am documenting, namely "Islam
Driving the Social and Legal Agenda."
August 6, 2004 update: The Khadrs, even dead, cannot stay out of the news.
Today's National Post reports that the widow of Sergeant 1st Class
Christopher J. Speer, a U.S. soldier who was killed on July 27, 2002 in a
battle with al-Qaeda, is suing the late Ahmed Said Khadr for US$10-million
in damages for his son Omar's allegedly tossing a grenade at him. The suit
was filed today in the U.S. Federal District Court of Utah, with lead
plaintiff his widow, Tabitha Speer. The wrongful death claim holds that the
estate of Khadr senior should compensate Mrs. Speer for Omar's actions
because the father preached Islamist values to Omar. "We're suing the father
for the acts of the son," said Donald Winder, lead lawyer for the lawsuit. A
draft version of the lawsuit, which will be filed in court this morning,
argues that "Khadr had a duty as a parent to exercise reasonable care to
control" Omar. "Khadr breached that duty, and in fact coerced, aided,
instructed and promoted his minor child, Omar Khadr, to commit violent,
dangerous and criminal acts of international terrorism."
Omar's lawyers recently filed a petition in another U.S. court (see July 6,
2004 update, above), asserting that he did not kill Speer. The Speer-led
suit targets Ahmed Said Khadr's assets blocked or frozen by Canadian and
American authorities, though no one outside the government has any idea what
they are worth. "It could be $10," Mr. Winder said. "It could be $10,000. It
could be $110,000."