The Khadr Family and American Justice

Dear Mr. President,
In the hysteria following 9/11, the U.S. turned the Khadr family of Canada into the poster child for Al Qaeda. Ahmed, the father, knew bin Laden, Zawahiri, al Libi and other Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, so he was put on The List. Guilt by association. U.S. intelligence claimed his charity was really laundering money for terrorists in spite of physical evidence to the contrary—hospitals, clinics, schools, orphanages and food programs funded by his charity. Ahmed appears to be what he said he was, a humanitarian who devoted his life to charity work. Those who knew him say he was not a fighter, he was a humanitarian. No matter. U.S. intelligence was convinced otherwise and he remained on The List. Accused of organizing, arming and training militants, on October 2, 2003, in South Waziristan, he was killed when a Pakistani Cobra gunship and security forces (or possibly a joint Pakistani/U.S. raid) attacked a house where he was staying with his 14-year-old son, Abdulkareem and 7 other men. In that raid, Abdulkareem was found hiding in a ditch and shot in the spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. When he and his mother returned to Canada on April 9, 2004, he got off the plane in his wheelchair, smiled and flashed the peace sign to reporters. So much for being an Al Qaeda militant. The youngest Khadr son, Omar, I wrote about yesterday. His fight against U.S. injustice is still ongoing. The eldest, Abdullah, was allegedly an arms dealer for Al Qaeda; he was called “one of the world's most dangerous men” by the State Department. He was arrested on October 15, 2004, in Pakistan, put in a secret prison and interrogated by “U.S. agents.” (The U.S. paid a secret [“national security”] $500,000 bounty for Abdullah.) Canada finally negotiated his release from Pakistan and on December 2, 2005, Abdullah returned to Toronto; 15 days later he was arrested again, this time for extradition to the U.S. Abdullah claimed the confession his extradition was based on was gained by torture. He spent the next 4½ year in prison until the extradition request was denied on August 4, 2010. He’s free now but I bet he’s still on The List and being watched. It’s pretty clear the Khadr family got railroaded by U.S. intelligence and their lives made miserable ever since. I’m also sure you would have handled the Khadrs much differently. You’d have put them on your Kill List and used drones and Hellfire to get rid of them. Mission accomplished. Justice served, Obama-style.