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| Great White North |
| Abdullah Khadr charged |
| 2006-02-09 |
| A federal grand jury in the United States formally charged a Canadian citizen on Wednesday with conspiracy to murder Americans outside the country and of buying weapons for groups linked to al Qaeda. Abdullah Khadr, who is being held in Canada on an extradition warrant from the United States, was charged with four counts involving procurement of weapons for al Qaeda and could face a life sentence. The 24-year-old is the eldest son of Ahmed Said Khadr, an alleged al Qaeda financier and close friend of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. His brother Omar Ahmed Khadr is the only Canadian held at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Michael Sullivan, the U.S. attorney in Boston where Khadr was charged, said in a statement he wants to extradite the Canadian to stand trial in the United States, where he could also face a $1 million fine if convicted. "The indictment of Abdullah Khadr demonstrates the commitment of the United States to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who seek to kill Americans here or abroad," Sullivan said. The indictment accuses Khadr of assisting his late father, Egyptian-born Canadian Ahmed Said Khadr, of supplying rockets, grenades, mines and other weapons to al Qaeda in 2003 for attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The son was arrested on December 17 in Canada after he returned from Pakistan, the U.S. attorney's office in Boston said. Khadr has said he was tortured in a Pakistani prison where he was detained without charges from October 2004. His teenage brother Omar has been a prisoner at Guantanamo since 2002 and will face a trial by a U.S. military tribunal for murder. Another brother, Abdurahman Khadr, was also a prisoner at Guantanamo, but was freed. He told Canadian media he had been asked to work for the CIA. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |