Nov. 18, 2007
Omar Khadr: The Youngest Terrorist?
Was Only 15 Years Old When He Was Captured In Afghanistan
-
Play CBS Video Video Minor Tried As Terrorist Omar Khadr is the only person in modern history to be tried for war crimes that he allegedly committed as a minor. Bob Simon reports on the controversy surrounding his case.
-
Omar Khadr (CBS)
-
Special Report War On Terror Complete coverage of the military's battle against terrorism.
Evidence like images caught on a videotape, found in the rubble after Khadr was captured. A man seen in the video is teaching the other men how to attach detonation wires to land mines. Also seen on the tape is a young man who appears to be Omar Khadr, helping put together a firing device.
Later in the videotape, you can see the land mines being planted in the ground, in the dark, most likely aimed at American soldiers.
Abdurrahman Khadr, one of Omar's older brothers, says Omar was in that compound that day because his father had sent him there.
Abdurrahman Khadr lives in Canada. He, too, was brought up as a Muslim extremist but, he says, he switched sides and worked with the CIA after 9/11. In spite of the videotape, he believes Omar went to the compound to act as a translator, not a fighter.
"He was sent there by my father and as an obedient kid and he said okay," Abdurrahman Khadr says.
And that is the heart of Omar Khadr’s defense, his lawyers say: that he had no choice because he had been indoctrinated since earliest childhood to be a good soldier for Allah and an obediant son.
"When you look at the strict culture he's from, you don't challenge your elders," Edney says. "So when his father tells the 15 year old boy, 'You’re going with these three men and you’re going to be a translator,' that’s what the boy does."
That, and everything else his father tells him to do. His father was Ahmed Said Khadr, a radical Muslim who had fought with the Mujahadeen against the Russians.
He was born in Egypt, then emigrated to Canada, and in 1993 moved his family to Afghanistan, where he ran a series of orphanages for Afghan children.
He brought up Omar the way he brought up a group of orphans, to believe there is only one way, the Muslim way, and that the dream of every young man should be getting to paradise by dying as a martyr. A video of Ahmed and the orphans was made in 2001, when the late George Crile, a 60 Minutes producer and author, went to Afghanistan to report on the world of extremist Muslims.
By this time, Omar Khadr's father was not only a well known relief worker, he was on a U.N. list of those associated with terrorism.
Asked if he was a terrorist, Ahmed Khadr told Crile in 2001, "I am not a terrorist."
Not a terrorist, he said, but he fervently believed that Afghanistan should be a Muslim state and that the United States was the enemy of Islam. "It looks like after we have removed the Russian Empire, we’ll have to end up removing also the American Empire," Ahmed Khadr told Crile.
He said that just three weeks before 9/11, an event Omar's father claimed he didn’t take part in, but didn't seem to feel sorry about, either.
"When September 11th happened, my dad was like, 'Yes, we attacked the enemy,'" Abdurrahman Khadr recalls. "For him, when he says 'We,' he doesn’t mean we, our family, he means we, Islam."
"It was Islam taking revenge against the United States?" Simon asks.
"Yes. And that's what he believed," Abdurrahman Khadr explains.
The six Khadr children grew up among other Arabic speaking families in Afghanistan, including the bin Ladens. They knew Osama bin Laden's children and sometimes played together. They even lived on and off in the same compound as Osama.
Asked if he looked up to Osama bin Laden, Abdurrahman Khadr tells Simon, "It was amazing to meet the person who was the most wanted person in the world. The minute he walked into the room and I was like, 'Wow, I just saw this person in the magazine and now he’s right here in front of me.' It was like a superstar, I think."
Some of the Khadr boys also went to summer training camps run by bin Laden,
something Abdurrahman says all the Arab kids in Afghanistan did. "Going to the camps, training camps is, like, for kids here to go to a hockey camp," he says.
He describes his family as sympathetic to the Taliban and al Qaeda, but not hardcore members of either. "We socialized with them more than had like business. My dad had some business deals with Osama. But not the rest of the family," Abdurrahman Khadr says.
But he acknowledges that they were brought up to fight for Islam.
Produced By Catherine Olian and George Crile
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Recent Segments
Scroll Left Scroll Right
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- next
See all 77 CommentsPosted by sapidity at 06:02 PM : Nov 19, 2007
I hate to confirm your suspicions, Yep! its your turn next, you don''t think CAFTA, NAFTA didn''t include you Canadians did you. Welcome to the club!! I wonder what feely is going to do now, No more Americans to curse and Canada will not fight as hard as we did so they will be easy.
Morons were hired into the CIA by the corrupted officals who hired a 9-11 plotter and gave her immunity. She works on your tax dollars.. thats why im monitored. I know this to be a fact.
Pam Toll Park Forest IL USA
Morons were hired into the CIA by the corrupted officals who hired a 9-11 plotter and gave her immunity. She works on your tax dollars.. thats why im monitored. I know this to be a fact.
Pam Toll Park Forest IL USA
Morons were hired into the CIA by the corrupted officals who hired a 9-11 plotter and gave her immunity. She works on your tax dollars.. thats why im monitored. I know this to be a fact.
Pam Toll Park Forest IL USA
Now can we address the real problem here - what some ADULT Muslims are teaching their children? How do we change this? Because until we do, we will continue to see children used as weapons! Not our choice but our reality.
Hey ignorant jackass - do you know how to read ?
This 15 year old dimwit was in Afghanistan, yet he is a Canadian. Spare us your diarrhea of the fingertips unless you read the facts first.
Posted by zoltaric
Yeah - ridiculous - they shuld have shot him for the spy he is 5 years ago. Zoltaric - you are an idotic ignornat ingrate that has been listening to his own far left viewpoint for so long that you need to be medically treated for inbread thoughts.
To bad it wasn''t your father, mother, son, or daughter this piece of human trash shot.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- next
See all 77 Comments