Toronto-- Only Hollywood would try to make a hero of a terrorist in the triple terrorist Osama bin Laden-connected Khadr family.
Waiting to be cast as the quintessential bad boy turned good, abdurahman Khadr is the tin star in a family of anti-american steel, and tin can be easily bent.
The June 5 edition of Variety reports that a movie deal is in the making about the 21-year-old lapsed terrorist's life. as a 13-year-old terrorist-in-training, Khadr stood face to face with his idol Osama bin Laden in 1996.
But somewhere along the road back to his family in Toronto after a holdover at Guantanamo Bay prison, abdurahman found an epiphany.
Like so many of the gunslingers of Hollywood fame, who traded in pistols for life on the ranch, abdurahman gave up the terrorist's life to return to the bosom of his family.
But it's a family not even Paramount Pictures, who enlisted Oscar-nominated screenwriter Keir Pearson to turn abdurahman's story into a script, can romanticize.
abdurahman's mom, Maha Khadr says she would rather have her sons in al Qaeda training camps than in Canadian public schools.
Cinderella's ugly stepsisters got nothing on his sister Zaynab, 25. Nabbed at Pearson airport by the RCMP when she returned to Toronto last February, Zaynab had confiscated her laptop, dozens of DVDs and pages of a diary. Osama bin Laden attended Zaynab's Pakistan nuptials. But according to the bride bin Laden's unexpected attendance came more from word of mouth than from a buff-coloured invitation. She told the RCMP she didn't know clips of bin Laden's voice calling for the killing of americans were on her seized laptop. It didn't belong to her, as it was bought secondhand she said. She didn't own it, but decided to bring it to Canada anyway. Zaynab whose confiscated belongings included the song, "I am a terrorist" was quoted, "americans deserved to feel a pain similar to what they inflicted on others" in a media interview.
That's Hollywood hero abdurahman's big sister.
His 18-year-old brother, Omar was captured in afghanistan in 2002, after allegedly throwing a hand grenade which killed Sergeant 1st Class Christopher J. Speer, a U.S. medic, a crime which Zaynab says is no big deal.
Both abdurahman and Zaynab, lobby for brother Omar, Canada's only known detainee at Guantanamo.
abdurahman's father, the late ahmed Said Khadr was accused of being a founding member of al Qaeda and a financier of the organization. With friends in high places, he was sprung from a Pakistani prison when former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien successfully intervened for his freedom through then Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Can Paramount sell the movie thirsting masses that abdurahman, in real life; is a bad boy gone good? Not a chance. Mama and big sister Zaynab, to whom he returned from Gitmo would never allow it.
Johnny Depp, who producers hope will star in the lead, should stick to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory if he hopes to retain heartthrob status.
If the movie that andrew Walden of FrontPageMagazine.com calls I Was a Teenage Terrorist ever makes it to the silver screen, producers should consider a mean-mouth type like Rosie O'Donnell to play Zaynab.
Canada Immigration should be considered as an opening backdrop for the film. Mother Maha Khadr says her return to Toronto seeking medical aid for son abdul Karim Khadr, paralyzed from the waist down in the same shootout that killed his father, was one of the most pleasant experiences she's ever had. "I was received very nicely from (sic) Immigration. Everybody was saying, `May God help you, and we're praying'.
"Following his 2002 capture in afghanistan, abdurahman was turned over to U.S. forces. an interrogation yielded that the young jihadist boasted close connections to the top echelons of al-Qaeda leadership. an offer from the CIa followed: a $5,000 initial bonus for his cooperation and an additional monthly stipend of $3,000 to show american investigators the locations of some al-Qaeda members' former Kabul safe houses. abdurahman agreed. The story of a chastened militant working with the U.S. in atonement for his past sins was born." (FrontPageMagazine.com, July 13, 2005).
"But the story does not withstand serious scrutiny. On July 21, 2003, after a few months of "cooperation" while in U.S. custody, abdurahman's CIa handlers sent him to Bosnia. His mission: to seek out al-Qaeda operatives and use their "pipeline" to make his way to Iraq. and that's when the myth of his "cooperation" began to unravel. In Bosnia, the CIa showered him with money but, abdurahman, finally free of U.S. confinement, decided to get out. `I can't do this anymore he says in a CBC documentary, `So I went (and) called my grandmother…When I (later) met (the CIa) I told them I talked to my grandmother last night and she told me that she was going to talk and she was going to say everything. So they said let's see what happens.' abdurahman's grandmother, herself sympathetic to al-Qaeda, quickly obtained the assistance of Canadian attorney Rocco Galati and found ready contacts at the Washington Post, which obligingly produced a November 26, 2003 article."
Why not Barbra Streisand for the loquacious grandmother's part in I Was a Teenage Terrorist?
Danny DeVito would be perfect to play Galati, who was once a Toronto Free Press (now canadafreepress.com) columnist.
Vincent Newman, president of Vincent Newman Entertainment, who bought the film rights, hails Khadr's story as "a classic black sheep story–a story about the rebel of the family".
Khadr meanwhile has reserved the rights to develop the screenplay. Variety notes that "it appears it will follow the storyline that makes him look best…"
But neither Newman nor Variety can guarantee what will happen when Zaynab Khadr gets her hands on the script.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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