Abdurahman's grandmother
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Abdurahman called his grandmother in Toronto and told her that he desperately wanted to come back to Canada. He told her to announce in the Canadian media that the Canadian government was not helping him.
After the news about him broke in Canada, Abdurahman says he was brought to a CIA safe house in Sarajevo. He says the Americans agreed to let him go back to Canada, and he promised he would not tell anyone of the CIA relationship with him.
He says the CIA took away all the things they had bought him and dropped him off at the Canadian embassy.
When he arrived back in Canada he was met by his grandmother and her lawyer, Rocco Galati.
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Days later he held a news conference and told lies about what happened after his release from Guantanamo. He stuck to the story he says was dictated to him by the CIA.
"You know, it is convenient but in the end it's only just about the truth. I'm not saying this story for the people that are going to think it's convenient or for the people that think it's not convenient. I want everybody to know what happened."
Abdurahman had mentioned that he was twice subjected to polygraphs, lie detector tests by the CIA.
Lie detector test
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We asked him if he would submit to another series of polygraph tests to prove he was telling the truth now and he immediately accepted. The professional examiner asked him about working for American intelligence, being paid for it, being flown on a small jet to Bosnia for his mission there and other key parts of his story. On all major aspects of his story, he passed the polygraph test.
On February 1, 2004, thousands of Muslims gathered in Toronto for prayers to mark the end of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Abdurahman Khadr was among them. He volunteers at his local mosque and is looking for a job.
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He hopes to be an accepted member of the Muslim community in Toronto, but is worried about the reaction to his story from other Muslims, especially from his own family. His mother and sister are still living in Pakistan and deny any family connection to al-Qaeda.
"They will dread me. My mother especially, she will dread me for doing this. She will totally dread me for doing this…She'll say 'you left us. You sold out on your father. You sold out on your people. You know, you told a story, you know, you worked with the CIA.'"
The vest
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Every day in Islamabad, Abdurahman's mother Maha carefully folds up a treasured family heirloom. It is the partially burned, blood-spattered military vest her husband was wearing when he was killed last October by the Pakistan military. She carries it with her everywhere as a kind of good luck charm, dreaming of the day that she and her children can join him in paradise, something she believes is guaranteed because her husband died the death of a shaheed, a martyr.
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We did not tell Abdurahman's mother and sister the full details of his work for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, but they figured he must have offered some co-operation in order to be released from Guantanamo.
"He is intelligent and it's okay," Maha says.
"As long as he didn't really help them," Zaynab says. "He just fooled them. I don't mind it. If he really did something, I'd be ashamed of him, because Islamically, you're not allowed to co-operate with the enemy. It'll cost you your life."
Abdurahman Khadr says he would like to write a book about his personal journey from Osama bin Laden to the CIA. For now he's getting re-acquainted with life in Canada.
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In Toronto, he likes to spend time on Gerrard Street, where he can carry on in Dhari, Pashtu, Urdu, and Arabic, as well as English.
He hopes that one day all the surviving members of his family can join him here to start a new life.
In Pakistan, the women of the Khadr family are living on handouts and the kindness of old friends of the family. Maha hopes to be able to return to Canada soon with her 14-year-old son Karim, so that he can get the best medical attention for his spinal cord injuries. She, too, hopes that one day her family can be back together, in one country, under one roof.
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