As the picture of a bloodied, mangled head belonging to a suicide bomber circulated through international police offices yesterday, Canada's top military commander in the Afghan capital downplayed reports that the man who killed a Canadian soldier was himself a Canadian. "I think terrorists ... they don't have national identities," Maj.-Gen. Andrew Leslie told a press conference. "I don't think nationality is a factor — they are pan-national."
| "It's just his family that's Islamic Canucks." |
Agence France-Presse news service this week quoted a Taliban spokesperson claiming responsibility for the attack that killed Cpl. Jamie Murphy Jan. 27, and describing the bomber as a man some believe to be Abdullah Khadr, son of Toronto's Ahmed Said Khadr, an alleged Al Qaeda operative recently killed in Pakistan. Investigators circulated the gruesome photo — and another of the face of a suicide bomber who killed a British soldier Jan. 28 — in an attempt to identify the men. It is not known when DNA tests that might identify the remains will be completed. "In both cases, the heads are — I won't say intact, but discernible," Leslie said.
He was initially adamant the bomber was not Khadr, but yesterday he skirted around the issue. "I have a great deal of trouble accepting claims from any organization that kills innocent people," is all he would say when asked about the Taliban's claim.
| "You know how they lie..." |
The "remnants" of the suicide bomber's head belongs to a man of 25 to 40 years of age, Leslie said. Khadr, who has been accused of running a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, is 23.
| On the other hand, we're hoping he wasn't leading an easy life there, just before the end... |
A board of inquiry team from Ottawa's Department of National Defence, headed by Col. George Rousseau, arrived in Kabul yesterday to begin an intensive review of the suicide bombing. The four-person board is to sift through forensic analysis and photos of the bombing site to try to determine the circumstances surrounding Murphy's death. They will also scrutinize a video taken by a soldier who went down the same bumpy road Murphy did, 15 to 20 minutes before the deadly bombing. The sketchy images, taken by a hand-held video camera, depict several Afghan men riding bicyles, but "there's no discernible features," Leslie said, adding that technicians are trying to "enhance the quality of the film." Leslie hinted that the attack on the British patrol, the day after the one that killed Murphy, had a common purpose. "I'm confident that they are linked ... but I'm not going to tell you what the evidence is," he said.
Earlier in the week, Leslie suggested the attack on the Canadian was directed at NATO, not the Canadian forces. In Islamabad, Pakistan, Abdullah Khadr's sister again repudiated the claim that her brother was the Kabul bomber in an interview yesterday — although she acknowledged that her recent e-mail messages and phone calls have gone unanswered.
She refuses to relinquish hope that her brother is alive, she said: "From a religious point of view, one can never lose hope." Zaynab Khadr, 24, said the accusations of terrorism amounted to a smear campaign against her family.
| Kinda hard to smear the Khadr family, isn't it? They've done a pretty good job of it themselves... |
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