 Toronto, July 2008
Prior to July 2002, everybody who knew the young Omar Khadr identified him as a Canadian. Like the children of Canadian diplomats, he simply had a father whose work took the family overseas for long stretches of time. After the gangly 15-year old was found cowering in the remains of a bombed-out hideaway in Afghanistan, politicians and media outlets simply began refusing to recognise Omar as a true Canadian, absolving the country of any responsibility for aiding him. His family says history was rewritten to avoid an uncomfortable truth. "We were Canadian," his older sister Zaynab says authoritatively of their time overseas, "it was hard to miss that". So did pundits and spin doctors simply erase a Canadian child's past, to avoid risking our comfortable relations with the United States? Omar saw his 3-year old brother die of a congenital heart defect at the Hospital for Sick Children. He names the Metro Toronto Zoo among the best memories of his life. His father earned a Masters' degree from the University of Ottawa. His grandparents owned a bakery on Eglinton Avenue. To those who knew him before that fateful July afternoon in 2002, Omar always has been, and always will be, a proud Canadian. "He didn't like math very much"Born into the family of two Canadian NGO workers, Omar was widely known as his mother's favourite child. Married to a workaholic, and grieving the death of a young son, she latched onto the 16-month old Omar tightly. In 1992, the 7-year old Omar was living with his family just beyond the Dundas West subway station, and attending first grade at the same Mississauga private school at which all his siblings were enrolled. But as a single-income family whose sole earner was bedridden at Sunnybrook Hospital following an accident in Afghanistan, the Khadrs eventually moved into a small apartment in the deteriorating neighborhood at the intersection of Bloor and Lansdowne. Eventually Omar and his family followed their father back to an orphanage he had built in the refugee camps surrounding Peshawar. Enrolled at the Ansar Scientific Institute, a private school that taught Arab families in the region, Omar found himself fortunate. As a Canadian from a devout family, courses like English and Islamic Studies proved very simple, and he quickly excelled. "He was one of those students who worked hard, he liked his sciences" his older sister Zaynab recalls, "though he didn't like math very much". During summer vacation, the family would often return home to Scarborough. Like everybody in his family, Omar found that his father's frequent travels left him well-versed in local languages. In addition to English and Arabic, he also learned to speak Pashto while in Peshawar and picked up Dari from the refugees who filled his father's life. After the Afghan Civil War had largely ended, Ahmed moved his operations from Pakistan into Afghanistan itself, and focused his work on the Jalalabad orphanage. Preferring his children remain in the accredited Ansar Institute, Ahmed arranged with the school for Omar and his siblings to be homeschooled for the next two years, returning to Peshawar to write their exams. When Omar's mother and older sister returned to Canada, Ahmed sent them a letter containing a cassette tape, on which he explained how Omar had transformed himself into a domestic caretaker in their absence, proving himself "very handy, and very helpful". "We're fans of the Batmobile" The year before he was taken prisoner, Omar was virtually indistinguishable from any other young teenager. A fan of sports cars, Omar attended the February 2001 Auto Show at the Toronto Convention Centre with his cousin and younger brother. After passing over the Nissans and Volkswagens in favour of the Lamborghinis and Ferraris, the group got their photograph taken standing in front of the Batmobile. "We're fans of the Batmobile" Zaynab boasts, pointing to her brother's deadpan expression as she explains he doesn't smile for cameras.
Even in Guantanamo, Omar speaks openly about some his favourite movies; Hollywood films like Die Hard, Harry Potter and Braveheart. "Who doesn't like Harry Potter?" laughs his sister, adding that watching Braveheart was "a family tradition" in their household. While overseas, Omar and his siblings would amuse themselves by going to the marketplace to purchase pirated DVDs, "We'd get the movie over there the day it came out...very cheap, maybe half a dollar" Zaynab recalls, quite proud of the purchases. "They want him to suffer for the rest of his life"In November 2001, as the Khadrs joined the caravan of fleeing Afghans heading for the relative safety of Pakistan's mountainous border regions, Omar's brother Abdurahman was captured by the Northern Alliance. Not long afterwards, Zaynab took his other two brothers, Abdullah and Abdulkareem, to Islamabad as she sought medical attention for her own daughter. Omar was now alone at home with his mother and his 10-year old kid sister. In the Spring of 2002, Ahmed Khadr listened as his 15-year old son explained his loneliness with neither classmates nor siblings surrounding him, and how he felt humiliated when his mother forced him to dress as a girl to avoid being targeted by Pakistani security forces. The elder Khadr offered his teenage son a compromise, he could move into a group home run for young men if he promised to still check in regularly with his mother. The only son who had never been allowed out of his mother's sight, Omar quickly agreed to the deal. A month later, a friend approached the Khadrs and explained that he had some Arab colleagues staying at a small farm a few miles outside Khost.who needed a translator to interact with the locals. Since Omar spoke both Dari and Pashto, it was agreed that he could serve as their translator and guide. "We had an orphanage in Khost," Zaynab explains "so my brother knew the area". It wasn't long before the teenaged expatriate found himself in trouble. Special Forces were drawn to the Arabs' homestead and a shootout between the Americans and Omar's new friends followed. After the homestead was reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment and a pair of Apache helicopters , the soldiers entered and picked their way over the dead bodies. A sudden spray of bullets splashed against the walls around them and a grenade appeared arcing towards the soldiers from a small corridor. Sgt. Christopher Speer fell, fatally wounded by the blast. Turning the corner, an American soldier shot the lone surviving gunman and then spied the young Canadian teenager with his back to the noise, kneeling in pain against a shrub. Raising his rifle, he fired two shots into Omar's back. It was never proven who threw the grenade from the alleyway. With all the other occupants of the compound dead, the United States charged Omar and announced they would seek life imprisonment for the Canadian youth in Guantanamo Bay. "They want him to suffer for the rest of his life for a crime nobody even believes he committed", opines his angry sister. While she admits it's possible he may have thrown the grenade, she points to crimes committed by other Toronto youth, "it's not like he just went into a shop and shot somebody". "Working for charities and helping people"When asked about his plans for the future, Omar replied that he wanted to become a doctor. "It says a lot", his sister demurely whispers, reflecting on the past six years. "Working for charities and helping people" is a future she would love to see for her younger brother. As Omar's hopes of attending medical school fade, they are replaced by the very likely scenario that he will spend the rest of his life in Guantanamo Bay's detention camps. As Stephen Harper, then leader of the Canadian Alliance Party, summarised on the day the capture was announced in 2002, Omar represents something "dangerous to the Western alliance". And so he rots in a foreign prison, sacrificed on the altar of Canada-U.S. relations. | 
