On November 10, 2001, Abdurahman Khadr is arrested in Afghanistan as a suspected member of al-Qaeda. His father is Ahmed Said Khadr, a founding member of al-Qaeda, and virtually everyone in his family is linked to al-Qaeda. He has known Osama bin Laden and played with his children since he was a little boy, and has frequently attended al-Qaeda training camps. However, Abdurahman has always been the “black sheep” of the family and reluctant to embrace the militant jihadist ideology. He begins cooperating with the US military. Due to his in-depth knowledge of al-Qaeda operations, soon he is frequently leading US officials on tours of Kabul, pointing out the locations of what were al-Qaeda and Taliban safe houses and strongholds. For nine months, he lives in a CIA safe house near the US embassy in Kabul. In the summer of 2002, the CIA trusts him enough to offer him a formal paid job as an informant. He accepts. In early 2003, he agrees to pretend to be captured so he can be shipped to Guantanamo and inform on the prisoners there (see Spring 2003). [PBS Frontline, 4/22/2004; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 4/20/2006]
September-November 2003: CIA Informant Uncovers Bosnia Network Sending Al-Qaeda Fighters to Iraq
Abdurahman Khadr is a CIA informant (see November 10, 2001-Early 2003) and has been posing as a prisoner in Guantanamo so he can inform on the other prisoners there (see Spring 2003). But in September 2003, he leaves Guantanamo because the CIA gives him a new assignment, to infiltrate al-Qaeda-linked groups in Bosnia. He is given a brief training course in undercover work and then sent to Bosnia on a false passport. US intelligence believes that Bosnia has become an important pipeline for al-Qaeda volunteers who want to fight in Iraq. Khadr spends time at the King Fahd mosque, a large Sarajevo mosque which the US believes is a center of al-Qaeda activity. He becomes friendly with a suspected recruiter for al-Qaeda operations in Iraq. The CIA then wants him to follow the pipeline to Iraq and inform on al-Qaeda operations there. But Khadr considers Iraq far too dangerous. He is a Canadian citizen, and he contacts his grandmother in Canada and has her go public with part of his story so he will not be of use as an informant any more. In November 2003, he returns to Canada, after the CIA fails to give him most of his promised salary for his informant work. In February 2004, he contacts Canadian reporters and tells them his full story about being a CIA informant. His father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was a founding member of al-Qaeda, and his family disowns him when they find out about his involvement with the CIA. [PBS Frontline, 4/22/2004]
June 21, 2004: Very Little Intelligence Gained from Prisoners Held at Guantanamo; Vast Majority Are Innocent
Vice President Cheney has called the prisoners being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, “the worst of a very bad lot” (see January 27, 2002) and other US officials have suggested that information from them has exposed terrorist cells and foiled attacks. But a lengthy New York Times investigation finds that US “government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided.… In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of al-Qaeda. They said only a relative handful—some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen—were sworn al-Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization’s inner workings.” While some information from the prisoners has been useful to investigators, none of it has stopped any imminent attacks. Information from Guantanamo is considered “only a trickle” compared to what is being learned from prisoners held by the CIA in secret prisons elsewhere. Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, in charge of the task force running the prison, says, “The expectations, I think, may have been too high at the outset. There are those who expected a flow of intelligence that would help us break the most sophisticated terror organization in a matter of months. But that hasn’t happened.” Ironically, although few prisoners have been released, it appears about five have rejoined the Taliban and resumed attacks against US forces. Abdullah Laghmani, the chief of the National Security Directorate in Kandahar, Afghanistan, says, “There are lots of people who were innocent, and they are capturing them, just on anyone’s information. And then they are releasing guilty people.” [New York Times, 6/21/2004] Abdurahman Khadr, a CIA informant posing as a Guantanamo inmate for much of 2003 (see November 10, 2001-Early 2003 and Spring 2003), will later say about the prison: “There’s only, like, a 10 percent of the people that are really dangerous, that should be there. And the rest are people that, you know, don’t have anything to do with it, don’t even- you know, don’t even understand what they’re doing here.” [PBS Frontline, 4/22/2004] The Los Angeles Times reported back in August 2002 that no al-Qaeda leaders are being held at Guantanamo (see August 18, 2002). Some al-Qaeda leaders will be transferred into the prison from secret CIA prisons in September 2006 (see September 2-3, 2006).
