Still no answers a year after Canadian killed in Chechnya

A year after two young Canadian Muslim men disappeared while on a Middle Eastern holiday, authorities are no closer to knowing what happened. If Russian officials are to be believed, one was a jihadist explosives expert killed last Oct. 7 by special forces who ambushed a group of Chechen rebels.

The other has vanished without a trace.

"We would like to hear something," says Nasr Abubaker, whose younger brother Rudwan Khalil is the man the Russians claim was a mujahedeen - a Muslim holy warrior.

"We would like to hear what went wrong. We're not in a position to spend money and do this. We don't have any. We're just living day to day. This is bigger than us."

Officials in the largely Muslim republic in southern Russia claimed the 26-year-old Vancouver resident, who came to Canada as a teenage refugee from Sudan, had been recruited as a foreign fighter.

A Chechen guerrilla leader later claimed Khalil as a martyred warrior.

But his family said Khalil was a worldly young Canadian, a part-time model and movie extra who worked in a clothing store and loved to play soccer.

The last they'd heard from him was in late August 2004, when he and friend Kamal Elbahja, 22, of suburban Maple Ridge, B.C., were visiting Khalil's cousin in Dubai after seeing his father, who lives in Saudi Arabia.

The pair told relatives here they were headed to Azerbaijan after being invited by a friend, former Vancouver resident Azar Tagiev, to attend his wedding in the capital Baku.

"That's the last time we heard from him," says Elbahja's sister, Zora Azaz of Prince George, B.C.

Records show the two B.C. men took a flight to Daghestan, which like Azerbaijan borders on Chechnya.

Elbahja, a sawmill worker originally from Morocco, has vanished. The Russians said they had no evidence he was in Chechnya with Khalil.

"We're hoping every day," says Azaz. "We pray every day he'll come back."

Tagiev, the supposed bridegroom, also disappeared for months before resurfacing in Vancouver last May.

Khalil's family even doubted the dirty, bloated body displayed on Russian television a day after the firefight even was Khalil, although soldiers held up his Canadian passport and B.C. driver's licence.

The family tried unsuccessfully to have the body exhumed and returned from Chechnya.

After months of delay, the Russians did forward the man's bloodstained wallet to Canada. The family hopes a DNA test will confirm whether or not the dead man is Rudwan.

An RCMP spokesman says testing has been delayed because the both the blood sample and a hair taken from Khalil's home for comparison were both degraded.

"Both samples are very poor so that's going to be a problem," says S. Sgt. John Ward of RCMP E Division headquarters. "It's going to be a while."

It's possible the Mounties' lab may have results within a few weeks.

Meanwhile Canadian investigators are still trying to piece together what happened to the two men.

After Khalil was reported killed, the RCMP, CSIS and Foreign Affairs all began looking into the incident.

The investigation later was turned over to the B.C. unit of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET).

Ward says the probe is continuing and investigators are getting very good co-operation from the Russians.

"It's not without its challenges," he says, but won't elaborate on what the Canadians have learned.

The national-security officers did interview Tagiev after he returned to Canada but said he was not the target of an investigation.

"The police interviewed him but he said 'I know nothing about this case,' " says Zora Azaz. "He knows probably the kids. He used to play soccer with them in Vancouver."

INSET is also handling the hate-crimes investigation into Sheik Younus Kathrada, a conservative Muslim who heads a small Islamic centre in east Vancouver attended by Khalil, Elbahja and Tagiev.

Relatives say Khalil and Elbahja regularly went to lectures on Islam by Kathrada, some of which were recorded. One outlined a Muslim's obligations for jihad and in another, Kathrada called Jews "brothers of monkeys and swine," and talked of an apocalyptic battle between Muslims and Jews.

Kathrada, a native of South Africa, has said the diatribes were not intended to foster hatred and were rooted in Islamic scripture.

While both families doubt attending Kathrada's lectures turned the young men into jihadists, Elbahja's brother-in-law, Mohammed Azaz, has said they did start going to the mosque more frequently.

The lack of answers frustrates the men's relatives.

"It's very bad, you know," says Zora Azaz. "Nobody's telling us nothing. We're just waiting to see what happens. We're hoping every day something will come up, some new thing, but nothing yet.

"Every day my mom prays, my dad."

Nasr Abubaker says living with this unsolved mystery is hard for his mother, brothers and sister.

"It's day by day, you know."

Brandonsun

2005-09-13 11:29:27

http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2005/09/13/4067.shtml