By COLIN FREEZE

After an al-Qaeda suspect’s flight from a Pakistani jail to freedom in Canada was suddenly scuttled, Ottawa officials feared another U.S. “rendition” was in the works.
In the summer of 2005, federal officials wrote stern letters to Washington and Islamabad upholding that, as a Canadian citizen, Abdullah Khadr deserved due process, according to filings in his case reviewed by The Globe and Mail.

The officials stressed that Canada did not want Mr. Khadr hustled off to a Guantanamo Bay military commission – as two of the suspect’s brothers had been by that point – nor did they want him to be the subject of a so-called extraordinary rendition, as had previously happened to a Syrian-Canadian, Maher Arar, whose case was then being explored by a Canadian judicial inquiry.

The eldest living male member of the infamous Canadian family, Abdullah Khadr, now 28, was arrested in Pakistan in late 2004. It was revealed this week that a U.S. agency paid a $500,000 bounty for his capture and that diplomats in Canada grew alarmed when Pakistan didn’t produce him for a June, 2005, repatriation flight, as had been agreed.

After the flight was scuttled, federal officials were told that a planned RCMP prosecution against Mr. Khadr was faltering and that the United States was expressing a growing interest in gaining custody. Conscious of how past U.S.-driven cases had backfired on Canada, officials made strongly worded entreaties that the suspect face conventional laws and not any special so-called war-on-terrorism measures.

Canada’s acting deputy assistant attorney-general wrote to his U.S. counterpart on Aug. 25, 2005. “As a Canadian citizen, Mr. Khadr has a constitutional right to return to Canada,” reads the once “protected” note now filed in a Toronto court. “… Should the United States continue with the proposed removal [from Pakistan], Canada would therefore expect that it be done in accordance with due process of the law.”

Clare Barry of the Federal Prosecution Service continued by writing: “Canada would expect that, once in the United States, due process will continue to apply to Mr. Khadr and that he will be judged by a civilian tribunal with the full benefit of all U.S. constitutional safeguards.”

Notes from Canadian diplomats in Pakistan sent around the same time had a more ingratiating tone. “The High Commission appreciates the co-operation extended thus far by Pakistan authorities and wishes to remind the Ministry that Mr. Khadr is a Canadian citizen who, if he is to be expelled from Pakistan, has the right of return to Canada,” that note said.

Other filings indicate that rights-conscious Canadian diplomats had been walking a tightrope for months, as the Pakistanis mostly preferred to deal with U.S. and Canadian investigative agencies, which were interested in picking Mr. Khadr’s brain about al-Qaeda.

Having fled Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with his family after the 2001 U.S. invasion, Mr. Khadr was arrested in 2004. Several investigative agencies then lined up to see the prize: an English-speaking and relatively Westernized detainee who was deeply knowledgeable about al-Qaeda.

A U.S. agency, probably the CIA, spent 17 days interrogating him days after his capture that fall. In the spring, the RCMP came calling. After that, the FBI took a growing interest in speaking to Mr. Khadr.

Back in North America over the summer, the RCMP met with detectives based in the FBI’s Boston and Minneapolis field offices to exchange information.

The RCMP investigation centred on Ahmed Said Khadr, the family patriarch. Killed in Pakistan by soldiers a year before his eldest son was captured there, the senior Mr. Khadr was heralded by al-Qaeda as a martyr for the cause. This only enhanced the investigative interest in his Afghanistan-raised sons, all Canadian citizens.

The second son, Abdurahman, was 20 years old when captured in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo Bay – and, after being released in highly unusual circumstances, told reporters he turned against his family to work as a CIA mole. Omar Khadr, arrested as a 15-year-old al-Qaeda fighter in 2002, continues to linger in the U.S. military prison camp.

Abdullah Khadr spent nearly 14 months in the custody of the Pakistanis before he was allowed to return to Canada in late 2005. A couple of weeks later, he was picked up on a U.S. warrant put together by FBI in Boston. He remains jailed in Toronto, fighting extradition to the United States.

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