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Thursday, May 10, 2012

Omar Ahmed Khadr- The Terrorist No-One Wants

No-one wants Omar Ahmed Khadr, the 25-year-old Canadian al-Qaeda murdering terrorist (of Egyptian ancestry), who was captured after a deadly firefight in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was a baby-faced 15 year-old teen. Most of his time since then has been spent in Guantanamo, but the U.S. wants him out and is ready to send him back after a plea deal was reached in 2010 allowing him to serve the rest of his short sentence in a facility in Canada. The trouble is, the Canadians don't want him there either.

According to an interview on Sun News with U.S. Forensic Psychiatrist, Dr.  Michael Welner, Khadr was evaluated back in 2010 (at the behest of the Pentagon) to determine just how dangerous he really was, and the results were not at all promising. Khadr, wants to go home and "become a contributing member of our society," so says his lawyer, John Norris, but Welner has 73 reasons why Khadr still poses a danger to Western society, including the fact that:

1. he has no remorse for his terrorist activities, including killing a U.S. soldier
2. he bragged about killing SFC Christopher Speer
3. tests revealed Khadr as an angry and manipulative young man
4. Khadr has not been de-radicalized, even though his defense team recommended it as recently as 2009
5. the Imam they wanted to help him de-radicalize (who has called President Obama a "house slave") is a radical himself
6. he's actually not eligible to enter a de-radicalization programme because his family is highly radicalized.

Yes, papa Ahmed was also allegedly a terrorist (or at the very least a sympathizer) until he was killed alongside other al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Afghanistan in 2003; and several of his brothers also have extremist tendencies. In fact, even mama Khadr is very anti-Western, which is why the Khadr kids were often shuttled back and forth from Canada to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Khadr supposedly worked for several charitable NGOs. Even though mama Khadr thinks Western society turns kids into gay, drug addicts, she's back living in Canada.  I guess she had no problem with the Afghan opium trade, and the gay Pashtuns.

I'd like to think that people are redeemable, but religious extremists (especially Muslims) don't easily let go of their fanatical ideology, and the recidivism rate for radical Muslims (especially former Guantanamo detainees) is apparently very high.
So what will happen to Omar? Canada will reluctantly repatriate him, he'll serve out the rest of his sentence there, he'll be back out on the streets, and soon ship off to Yemen to join his Qaeda buddies.
We shall see.




H/T SM

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