globeandmail.com: Footage casts Khadr in sinister light
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CBS News has broadcast shocking new footage of a Canadian terrorism suspect allegedly building bomb timers and planting land mines while he was a 15-year-old militant hoping to take on American soldiers in Afghanistan.
The footage, some of it shot on a night-vision camera by alleged al-Qaeda fighters before it was seized by U.S. forces after a deadly raid, leaves a more sinister impression of Omar Khadr than the widely circulated photo of him as a boy benignly smiling at the camera.
Beyond the new footage, the 12-minute 60 Minutes piece contained few surprises for Canadians who have been following the case for years.
By 2003, the elder Mr. Khadr was alleged to be a senior al-Qaeda member. He was killed in a battle against the Pakistani army in 2003.
It was he who enrolled his sons into al-Qaeda training camps, and sent his second youngest, Omar, then aged 15, to the front lines in 2002. U.S. soldiers say he threw a deadly grenade that killed a soldier during a battle, prompting them to shoot him three times before giving him medical care.
Five years later, legal proceedings in "Gitmo" have repeatedly stalled against Omar Khadr, and the tall 21-year-old prisoner in Cuba now bears faint resemblance to the boy filmed in the 60 Minutes video, caught smiling and laughing as he prepares for war.
Omar's younger brother Karim was also shown in the piece. The footage was shot in 2004, just weeks after he returned to Canada from Pakistan. He survived, but was paralyzed by the deadly battle that killed his father.
In that footage, a 14-year-old Karim Khadr talks about how he wanted to become a martyr so he could be doted on in the afterlife by dozens of fragrant-smelling virgins.
He adds that he expected that Omar would want to resume battles against Americans when he gets out of Guantanamo Bay. "When he's all right again he'll find them again ... and take his revenge," he said.
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