Not much is known about the sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Yousef al-Khalid, then age 9, and Abed al-Khalid, then age 7, were kidnapped in 2002. The CIA acknowledged that they had the boys in 2003.
Not much is known about the sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Yousef al-Khalid, then age 9, and Abed al-Khalid, then age 7, were kidnapped in 2002. The CIA acknowledged that they had the boys in 2003.
Here is an excerpt from the time of their kidnapping:
We have your sons: CIA
March 10 2003
By Olga Craig
Kuwait
Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being used by the CIA to force their father to talk.
Yousef al-Khalid, 9, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, 7, were taken into custody in Pakistan in September when intelligence officers raided a flat in Karachi where their father had been hiding.
Mohammed fled just hours before the raid but his sons and another senior al-Qaeda member were found cowering behind a wardrobe in the apartment.
The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities but this weekend they were flown to America where they will be questioned about their father. CIA interrogators confirmed that the boys were staying at a secret address where they were being encouraged to talk about their father's activities. "We are handling them with kid gloves," said one official. "After all, they are only little children, but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care."
Here is an excerpt from the affidavit of the father of one of their first cellmates, who says they were TORTURED, using INSECTS and FOOD DEPRIVATION:
http://en.wikisource.org/...
Also according to Mohammed, he and Majid were detained in the same place where two of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s young children, ages about 6 and 8, were held. The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs, and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.
Here is part of the statement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad at his Combatant Status Review hearing, about his children:
They arrested my kids intentionally. They are kids. They been arrested for four months they had been abused.
We don't know where these boys are. We don't know whether they are alive or dead.
Should children pay for the assumed crimes of their father ?
Please, help to find these children. Ask the President where they. Ask your senators where they are. Ask your congressional representative where they are. Please don't let them be forgotten.
In yesterday's diary, I talked about the need to stand up.
The first thing I think we need to talk about is what we are going to ask for. My proposed list is:
- An independent, full and public accounting of all those held in US custody since January 21, 2001, those renditioned and disappeared, including the children, their whereabouts, their treatment while in custody, and their condition.
- An independent, full and public investigation into the making of torture as US law, policy and practice, those who created the new definitions of torture, those who made them US law, those who authorized the policies, those who ordered the torture, and those who carried them out. Any indictments that are recommended by the independent investigators should be followed through on.
- A removal of Appendix M from the US Army Field Manual on Human Collector Intelligence Operations or a removal from the Appendix of Human Contact Deprivation, Sensory Deprivation, and the allowing of psychiatric drugs to obtain intelligence.
- Allowing those who have been tortured by the US government to sue.
That's my most important list. I know there are other things I would like to happen, like Maher Arar off the US No-Fly List too.
What is on YOUR list?
How can I improve the wording of the list ?
And now to the ways we can make this happen:
- The most important thing each and every one of you can do is to pester, or keep pestering, the President, the Attorney General, your senators and your congressional representatives.
2)Talk with your family, friends and others around you about it.
3)Write letters to the editor of your local newspapers.
There are two other ways:
- I am willing and able to travel pretty much anywhere at anytime to talk about these issues, so I am now charging each of you to think of a place in your community where I can come and talk. School ? Church ? Peace Group ? Whatever ! I have been speaking publically in different contexts, in front of groups from 30 to 5,000, for over thirty years, and have done many interviews with the media, so I have experience. Please use my time and talents. Help me tell Dan's story and the prisoners' stories. All I need is a place, a date and time, and transportation funding and I will be there.
- The second major thing I think we need to do is MARCH for ACCOUNTABILITY. My life has been chaotic the last two years, so my efforts in that area have not borne fruit, very sadly. This year will be different, with your help. I am looking to partner with a group or groups who have done a major March before; do you have contacts with such a group ? Please throw out your suggestions in comments.
Okay, this diary is long enough. I look forward to YOUR ideas.
Standing for justice and accountability,
For Dan,
Heather