So. Abdurahman Khadr was a CIA informant who got himself sprung from Guantanamo by informing on his father, later killed in Pakistan. This is kind of sordid, but it’s not as if the world is much diminished by Khadr Sr.’s absence. More surprising: it seems not to have entered Khadr Jr.’s mind that this is something he might want to be in any way discreet about. The result is a TV interview that feels like a highway pileup in slow motion.
What seems to have happened is that Khadr Jr. has gotten it into his head, or had it put into his head by the CBC, that he has to clear his name by presenting himself as having been the lone voice for truth and right, and that the best way of doing this is on TV. He's not bright enough to pull it off by himself, though; the results are edifying, but perhaps not in the way that he'd hoped.
A family moment: All the other kids have joined the apocalyptic death cult, Khadr Sr. tells his son, so why can't he?
And yet, he told the CBC, he still could not meet the expectations of his father, whom he recalled saying, " 'Why do you not act like the rest of the kids, so Osama can always mention you, and you could be the commander of a training camp?'
from cbc.ca -
TORONTO - A Canadian who was released from Guantanamo Bay in October says he lied about his family's ties with al-Qaeda and that he was trained to become a suicide bomber.
In a documentary aired Wednesday on CBC's The National, Abdurahman Khadr said his father was old friends with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and that his brothers attended terrorist training camps.
"Until now, everybody says we are an al-Qaeda-connected family but when I say this, just by me saying it, I just admitted we are an al-Qaeda family. We had connections to al-Qaeda," said Abdurahman Khadr.
from the Globe
It was in Afghanistan that he became friends with Mr. bin Laden.
Khadr family members told the CBC that they watched Mr. bin Laden ride horses and play volleyball when the families lived together in a compound.
Abdurahman recalled astonishment at meeting the man he had seen described in a magazine of America's most-wanted terrorist suspects.
"But I would say he's a normal human being. He has issues with his wife, he has issues with his kids. Financial issues, you know, the kids aren't listening . . . and this and that.
So it comes right down to he's a father and he's a person." Said Abdurahman's sister, Zaynab: "It was very important for him to sit with his kids every day at least for two hours in the morning."
She told the CBC that Mr. bin Laden liked to read poetry and history to his children. "He loved playing volleyball and he loved horse-riding.
Amongst people he was not Osama bin Laden; he was just the sheik.
"And kids played around him. Kids would go shake his hand. . . . When they'd go shooting, he'd go with them, and if he missed they'd laugh at him."
Full stories here, here and here.