Hollywood and the Teenage Terrorist

[Bonnie]

This is wonderful!!

I Was a Teenage Terrorist
By Andrew Walden
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 13, 2005

In 1996, Abdurahman Khadr, then 13-year-old terrorist-in-training, stood face to face with his idol: Osama bin Laden. Before long, Khadr would join the ranks of al-Qaeda’s jihad in Afghanistan, fulfilling the calling of his hard-line Islamist family by waging war against the hated Americans. Now, after a stint at Guantanamo Bay prison, Abdurahman will become an American hero—at least if Hollywood has its way.

The June 5 edition of Variety reports that a movie deal is in the works about the 21-year old lapsed-terrorist’s life. Paramount Pictures has even enlisted the Oscar-nominated screenwriter Keir Pearson to turn Abdurahman’s story into a script. The movie will reportedly find a feel-good lesson in Abdurahman’s journey from bin-Laden’s training camp in Afghanistan, through Guantanamo and Bosnia to Toronto, Canada, where Khadr, having allegedly renounced his terrorist ways, now resides with other members of his family.



For his participation in the project, Khadr will be generously rewarded: The National Post, quoted by Daniel Pipes, reports that Abdurahman—the “good son” of the Khadr family—could earn as much as $500,000 when the movie debuts sometime around 2006. Daily Variety, also quoted by Pipes, suggests that the deal may be worth in the "mid- to high-six figures.” The producers hope Johnny Depp will star in the lead. Vincent Newman, president of Vincent Newman Entertainment, who bought the rights, is quoted hailing Khadr’s “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....”



Khadr certainly has his work cut out for him. The tale of a young rebel who never reconciled himself to his family’s extremist ways may set the hearts of Hollywood producers aflutter. But it would be difficult to tell a story more incompatible with the facts of Khadr’s life.



The Khadr family name first became widely known in Canada in 1996, when Abdurahman’s father, Ahmed Said Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was arrested in Pakistan for his role in bombing the Egyptian embassy. Canada’s then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien personally pressured Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto during face-to-face meetings in Islamabad, and won Ahmed’s release. Egyptian-born Ahmed Said Khadr’s career in terrorism can be dated to the 1980s, when he befriended Osama bin Laden during the jihad against Soviet forces.



When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, Ahmed moved his family from Canada to Afghanistan, where they could be closer to bin-Laden. Abdurahman and Abdulla, the eldest of Khadr’s sons, duly attended an al-Qaeda training camp at Khalden, Afghanistan, receiving a solid grounding in terrorist ideology and weapons training. So intimate were the ties between the Khadr family and bin Laden that in January of 2001—eight months before the 9-11 attacks--the Khadr’s attended the wedding of bin Laden’s son, Mohammed. In 1999, bin Laden had attended the wedding of Abdurahman’s sister Zaynab, an Islamic fundamentalist whose faith in bin Laden’s murderous vision remains unshaken. Little wonder that Abdurahman today describes his family as an “al-Qaeda family

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18646