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Court filings shed light on the role Islamabad and U. S. agents played in five-month delay of al-Qaeda suspect’s return flight to Toronto

COLIN FREEZE

Canadian officials privately complained they were sandbagged by the Pakistani government’s last-minute reneging on a deal to place al-Qaeda suspect Abdullah Khadr on a June, 2005, flight back to Canada - five crucial months before he was allowed to return to Toronto, only to be rearrested on a U. S. warrant.

Court filings in the extradition matter reviewed by The Globe and Mail show consular officials were mystified when a deal between Ottawa and Islamabad to repatriate Mr. Khadr broke down without explanation. Diplomats who arranged the suspect’s release had secured a place for him on a specific British Airways flight, hired agents to guard him, cleared him from being on any no-fly lists, and arranged an emergency passport.

By that point, Mr. Khadr had been held for eight months by the Pakistani government, which was seemingly content to release him from a secret intelligence safe house and back to Canada. On the heels of a Globe and Mail legal battle for disclosure, a Canadian judge revealed this week that the United States had issued a $500,000 bounty for the Canadian citizen’s capture in Pakistan.

Yet for undisclosed reasons, the Pakistanis kept Mr. Khadr in the secret safe house for five more months after his scheduled repatriation flight, allowing FBI agents - sometimes referred to as a “clean team” - to reinterview him. In the process, they garnered a key, and relatively untainted, interview that now forms the basis for the ongoing U. S. extradition claim

It’s unclear who or what led the Pakistanis to delay the release of Mr. Khadr. But the development occurred as the Mounties slowly resigned themselves to the fact they would likely be unable to launch any prosecution against him in Canada, given that courts might not countenance statements made in a Pakistani quasi-prison. It was at that point that the FBI stepped up its own, independent efforts to get a U. S. case in gear.

Mr. Khadr, the most senior living male member of Canada’s Khadr clan, was eventually released by Pakistan, returning to Canada in November, 2005. He was arrested just two weeks later on a U. S. warrant alleging involvement in al-Qaeda. Lawyers are fighting removal, arguing that all of the now 28- year-old’s confessions - which involved admissions he ran guns to al-Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan - are tainted by mistreatment he suffered in Pakistan.

Court filings in the extradition matter reveal internal Foreign Affairs records that show Mr. Khadr was supposed to have been placed aboard a British Airways flight, leaving Islamabad on June 15, 2005, and arriving in Toronto at 6 p. m. Four seats were booked, for two Pakistani intelligence agents, one Canadian security chief and for Mr. Khadr, travelling under a newly issued emergency Canadian passport, No. EC016094.

Yet the day of the flight, Mr. Khadr was a no-show, which confused Canadian consular officials. “Given subj is now not returning to Cda, grateful mission wld ask Pakistani authorities what happened, where he is, which authority is holding him, etc. etc, and a new consular visit asap,” reads a same-day note sent within Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department.

“This is a big issue for us,” said Khadr defence lawyer Nathan Whitling in an interview yesterday. He says that if officials stuck with the original flight plan, the FBI would never have gotten the statements they are now relying upon to extradite Mr. Khadr.

The case of the missing passenger, never before reported from the voluminous filings in the case, provides a seeming glimpse into the invisible realpolitik and horse-trading practised by counterterrorism agencies when they converge around a common suspect.

Visits from U. S. agents appear to have bookended Mr. Khadr’s stay in the Pakistani safe house. In the middle there were some interactions with Canadian agents who tried - and failed - to get an incriminating statement that would hold water in Canadian courts.

The Federal Court decision released this week sheds some light on the chain of events. In the fall of 2004, “agents of the United States began to interview Mr. Khadr some four days after his arrest, described as ‘debriefings,’ which continued for 17 days while he was within custody of Pakistani authorities,” Mr. Justice Richard Mosley wrote. “A member of the FBI was part of the team that conducted those briefings.”

The Mounties went to Pakistan in the spring of 2005, with an eye to laying charges in Canada.

Court filings show the Mounties felt the $10,000 flight to Pakistan was worth the cost - and a real opportunity to put the RCMP on the map as a self- sufficient intelligence agency. But it was conceded from the outset that interviews garnered from a detainee in Pakistan posed some obvious problems.

Canada has never successfully prosecuted a terrorism case.

May 16th, 2008 | Category: Detainee, Pakistan |  Print This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL