Canadian court denies terror extradition appeal

TORONTO – A court denied an appeal Friday by the government to extradite a Canadian man indicted in the U.S. on charges he supplied al-Qaida with weapons.

Abdullah Khadr, 29, was arrested in Canada on a U.S. warrant in December 2005, but released last summer after a judge refused to extradite him to the United States.

The U.S. case against Khadr relied on a statement he made to the FBI and Canadian police in Pakistan, and information he gave upon arrival in Toronto in December 2005. Khadr's lawyers argued the statements made in Pakistan were the result of torture.

Superior Court Justice Christopher Speyer ruled at the time the self-incriminating statement was "manifestly unreliable."

The suit, filed by the Attorney General of Canada on behalf of the United States, argued that the original judge went beyond his jurisdiction in refusing to extradite him to the U.S.

However, in an unanimous 3-0 decision, an Ontario Court of Appeal panel affirmed the judge's decision not to hand over Khadr because doing so would have meant Canadian courts were complacent with the abuse he suffered at the hands of U.S. officials.

Khadr was indicted in February 2006 by a federal grand jury in Boston.

Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was an alleged al-Qaida militant and financier, killed in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter shelled the house where he was staying with some senior al-Qaida operatives.

A brother, Omar Khadr, is the last Western detainee held at Guantanamo Bay. Omar is accused of killing an American soldier with a grenade during a 2002 battle in Afghanistan.

Another of Khadr's brothers, Abdurahman Khadr, has acknowledged that their Egyptian-born father and some of his brothers fought for al-Qaida and had stayed with Osama bin Laden.

The CIA paid Pakistani authorities a US$500,000 bounty to detain Abdullah Khadr in October 2004. The U.S. alleges Abdullah Khadr bought AK-47 and mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and containers of mine components for al-Qaida for use against coalition forces in Afghanistan. He allegedly bought the weapons at the request of his father, authorities said.