Benjamin and Sharon Vogelenzang were accused of launching a tirade against white British Muslim convert Ericka Tazi, 60, at their hotel in Liverpool where she had been staying while she attended a course at a local hospital in March.

Tazi, who converted to Islam 18 months ago, said they had laughed at her when she wore a hijab on the last day of her stay and Dutch-born Benjamin Vogenlenzang, 53, had called the prophet Mohammed a murderer and likened him to Saddam Hussein and Hitler.

Sharon Vogelenzang, 54, admitted suggesting that the hijab was a form of bondage but said her views were based on media references to Muslim women.

The couple also told the court that Tazi had insulted their religion by calling Jesus Christ a minor prophet and said the bible was untrue.

After a two-day trial judge Richard Clancy at Liverpool Magistrates Court dismissed charges the hoteliers had used threatening, abusive or insulting words which were religiously aggravated, the Press Association reported.

Mrs Tazi

He said Tazi’s claim she had been abused for up to an hour had not been borne out by other prosecution witnesses.

Prosecutors defended bringing the case, saying they believed there had been sufficient evidence for a realistic chance of a conviction.

“We would like to thank all those who have supported us over the last nine months — our family, our friends, our church, and Christians from all around the world and non-Christians,” Sharon Vogelenzang told reporters outside court after the verdict.”As Christmas approaches we wish everybody peace and goodwill.”

veiled Egyptian students wearing the face-covering veil, known as the niqab,

Egypt’s top Islamic cleric is planning to ban students wearing the face veil from entering the schools of al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s premier institute of learning, according to an independent daily Monday.

A security official also told The Associated Press that police have standing verbal orders to bar girls covered from head to toe from entering al-Azhar’s institutions, including middle and high schools, as well as the dormitories of several universities in Cairo.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak to the press, said the ban was for security reasons.

The moves appear to be part of a government campaign cracking down on increasingly overt manifestations of ultraconservative Islam in Egypt.

While a vast majority of Egyptian women wear the headscarf, only a few wear the niqab, which covers the face and is common in neighboring Saudi Arabia which practices the more conservative form of Wahhabi Islam. The trend seems to gaining ground in the Arab world’s most populous country.

There is no uniform religious opinion across the Muslim world about whether a head scarf — much less a face veil — is required.

The majority of Islamic scholars say the face veil is not required but is merely a custom that dates back to tribal, nomadic societies living in the Arabian desert before Islam began.

Sheik of al-Azhar Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi’s plans came to light when he told a middle school student in a class he was visiting earlier this week to take off her niqab.

Tantawi was inspecting al-Azhar’s schools at the start of the academic year to check on measures in place to stem the spread of swine flu, according to details of the visit published by the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Tantawi angrily told the girl that the niqab “has nothing to do with Islam and is only a custom” and made her take it off.

He then announced he would soon issue an order banning girls from entering al-Azhar schools wearing the niqab.

“Niqab has nothing to do with Islam…I know about religion better than you and your parents,” the cleric was quoted as telling the student.

Tantawi left Cairo late Sunday on a visit to Tajikistan and was not available for comments. Calls to his deputies went unanswered.

However, Abdel Moati Bayoumi, a scholar in an al-Azhar affiliated research center, said al-Azhar’s scholars would back Tantawi if he issues the order.

“We all agree that niqab is not a religious requirement,” Bayoumi said. “Taliban forces women to wear the niqab… The phenomena is spreading” and it has to be confronted, he added. “The time has come.”

Critics of the move, however, say the ban has little chance of being implemented. A previous directive by the minister of religious endowment to ban women preachers wearing the niqab from mosques was hotly contested. A ban on nurses wearing full veil was announced last year, but not enforced.

A researcher wearing the niqab prevented from using the library at the American University in Cairo in 2001 took her case to the Egypt’s supreme court and eventually won. The court ruled a total ban on the niqab to be unconstitutional.

The court did recommend that women wearing the niqab be made to uncover their faces before female security guards to verify their identity.

On Saturday, scores of female university students protested outside al-Azhar university dormitory calling for the repeal of the decision banning fully veiled women from entering. There were similar demonstrations at Cairo University.

Sheik Safwat Hijazi, a scholar and preacher, said he would personally sue anyone who prevented his daughter or wife wearing full niqab from going about her daily life, including entering government offices.

“Preventing a woman from wearing what she wants is a crime,” Hijazi said. “Whoever says the niqab is a custom is not respectable.”

Hossam Bahgat, of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the series of government decisions against the niqab are “arbitrary” and while designed to combat extremism, only end up being discriminatory against women.

“The (veiled female students) are barred from government subsidized housing and nutrition because they are considered extremists,” he said.

Swiss businessman Guillaume Morand erected a minaret atop the chimney of his office building

In a country where failing to use official, region-specific trash bags can incur a hefty fine, defying a architectural ban on minarets is practically an act of terrorism. 

But that didn’t stop Swiss businessman Guillaume Morand, who protested last month’s constitutional amendment banning minarets by building one atop the chimney of his office in the city of Lausanne.

Morand, who owns a chain of shoe stores, told the AFP news agency that the ban is shameful, and blamed liberal parties for failing to counter what he described as right-wing scare tactics. The Swiss People’s Party, which spearheaded the initiative to ban minarets on mosques, released an aggressive campaign including posters of women in face-covering burkas and minarets shaped like rockets.

The ban was all the more scandalous, Morand said, given that Switzerland encourages Arabs to “visit the country and to spend their money here.”

Morand joins prominent Jewish leaders and the Vatican in condemning the referendum last month, when 53% of Swiss voters went to the polls to decide whether to outlaw the construction of any more minarets, although only four mosques in Switzerland have them. The amendment passed with 57% of the votes.

The Independent of London reported Monday that a group of prominent Swiss intellectuals is already preparing an initiative to overturn the ban, although many have speculated the new amendment will be struck down anyway by the European Court of Human Rights.

The Vatican backed a statement by the Swiss Bishops’ Conference calling the decision “a great challenge on the path of integration in dialogue and mutual respect.”

Moreover, the statement said, the vote “will not help the Christians oppressed and persecuted in Islamic countries, but will weaken the credibility of their commitment in these countries.”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that European Jews have also come out strongly against the ban, pointing out that in the past, bans and regulations were imposed on synagogues as well.

“Precisely because the Jewish community has firsthand experience of discrimination, it is committed to active opposition to discrimination and to action in favor of religious freedom and peaceful relations between the religions,” two Swiss Jewish groups declared in a statement.

Swiss Jewry, the statement said, “takes seriously the fears of the population that extremist ideas could be disseminated in Switzerland. But banning minarets is no solution — it only creates in Muslims in Switzerland a sense of alienation and discrimination.”

The American Anti-Defamation League also released a statement condemning the ban as a “populist political campaign of religious intolerance.”

“This is not the first time a Swiss popular vote has been used to promote religious intolerance,” the statement read. 

“A century ago, a Swiss referendum banned Jewish ritual slaughter in an attempt to drive out its Jewish population,” it said. “We share the … concern that those who initiated the anti-minaret campaign could try to further erode religious freedom through similar means.”

The executive director of the American Jewish Committee said the group stands “firmly against these rabble-rousing politics in the name of pluralism and democracy.”

Ismail Bostanov

The Deputy Chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Stavropol, Ismail Bostanov, was murdered in the city of Cherkessk on Sunday (September 20). Interfax quoted a law enforcement source in Karachaevo-Cherkessia as saying the attack took place when Bostanov’s was stopped at a traffic light and unidentified attackers opened fire on him. Bostanov was killed and his son was wounded and hospitalized (Interfax, September 20). According to other reports, the attack took place at a gas station (RIA Novosti, September 20). Bostanov was reportedly traveling back from a mosque in Ust-Dzheguta, south of Cherkessk, with his son when the attack occurred (www.newsru.com, September 20).

Bostanov was the Deputy Chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Stavropol for over 20 years and rector of the Islamic Institute in Karachaevo-Cherkessia for more than 10 years (www.gazeta.ru, RIA Novosti, September 20). In December 2006, three masked attackers broke into Bostanov’s home in Cherkessk, knifed and shot him and with firearms and beat up his wife. However, investigators at the time concluded that attack was part of an attempted robbery because the raiders stole money from Bostanov’s house (Kommersant, September 21).

Ismail Berdiev, who is the mufti of Karachaevo-Cherkessia and head of the Coordination Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus, said yesterday that he is convinced that Bostanov was killed by “Wahhabis” -the standard term used by local officials in the North Caucasus, both governmental and religious, for Islamist rebels and their sympathizers. “And who else could it have been -he was not a businessman, so that it could have entered someone’s mind to kill him for the sake of money,” Berdiev told Interfax, adding that Bostanov was known in Karachaevo-Cherkessia as “an active fighter against the spread of Wahhabi ideology.” Berdiev expressed particular indignation over the fact that Bostanov’s murder took place on the Muslim holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan (Eid Al-Fitr started Sunday, September 20, in most Arab and Muslim countries as well as in North America and Europe). “It simply beggars the imagination that someone dared to commit this heinous crime on such a holy day,” Berdiev said (www.newsru.com, September 20).

The Islamist rebel website Kavkaz Center reported Bostanov’s murder, describing him as a “murtad” (apostate) and an “evil enemy of Allah” who “carried out an anti-Islamic policy as rector of the ‘Islamic Institute.’” However, the website’s report did not include a claim of responsibility for the attack (www.kavkazcenter.com, September 20).

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov condemned Bostanov’s murder and urged all Muslims to unite against Wahhabism. “What has happened today proves again that all Muslims must act against Wahhabism,” he said in a statement. “If we want to stem this evil, the fight against it must be tough and continued.” Kadyrov said Bostanov was a deeply religious man and noted that the murder occurred during Ramadan. “He held an exceptionally principled position on reactionary Wahhabism and extremism. There were assassination attempts on his life before but they did not break his will or frighten him. In his sermons he led an uncompromising struggle against those who use Islamic slogans to commit cruel murders, terrorist acts and discredit our religion,” he continued. Kadyrov conveyed his condolences to Bostanov’s relatives (RIA Novosti, September 20).

However, Kommersant reports today that many of Bostanov’s relatives and friends do not believe that “Wahhabis” killed him. “Ismail-khadzhi was not involved in witchcraft or other activities censured by both official Islam and the Islamic underground,” the newspaper quoted one of the people gathered near the slain cleric’s home on Sunday. “As for the criticism [he] directed at the Wahhabis, all the imams rail against them, but they are not killed for it,” the relative suggested. According to Kommersant, relatives of Bostanov said he had not recently received any threats (Kommersant, September 21).

Bostanov’s murder was denounced by the leaders of Russia’s religious establishment. The Council of Muftis of the Russian Federation issued a statement saying that Bostanov’s killers were among “the violent enemies of Islam and mankind” (Interfax, September 20). Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill conveyed his condolences and support to Russia’s Muslim leaders and said Bostanov’s murder was aimed at intimidating traditional Muslim leaders but it would only strengthen their desire for peace and accord in society (www.ruvr.ru, September 21). Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Berl Lazar, expressed his condolences to Bostanov’s family and Russia’s Muslim community and said he was convinced that representatives of all of Russia’s traditional religions would unite to demand “maximally harsh measures against the bandit [rebel] underground” and their accomplices (Interfax, September 21).

Whoever murdered Ismail Bostanov and whatever their motive was, the killing took place against the backdrop of escalating insurgent violence in the North Caucasus. Two members of the anti-extremism center of Ingushetia’s interior ministry were shot to death and another wounded in an attack Sunday. Interior ministry sources said the attack took place at 12:15 p.m., local time, on the Kavkaz federal highway near the village of Gazi-Yurt in Ingushetia’s Nazran district, when unidentified gunmen fired on a car in which the ministry employees were traveling (ITAR-TASS, September 20). RIA Novosti reported today that the three Ingush policemen shot in the attack were brothers and that all of them died on the spot (RIA Novosti, September 21).

On September 19, attackers first shot up and then blew up a high-voltage electric power line on the outskirts of the Ingush city of Karabulak. On September 18, a bomb exploded in front of a freight train in Karabulak. The train was not derailed and no one was hurt in the blast. On September 17, a bomb detonated as a police patrol car was passing by in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya in Ingushetia’s Sunzha district. Two policemen were hurt in the blast and hospitalized. The previous day, September 16, there were reports of two powerful explosions and subsequent gunfire in Ordzhonikidzevskaya, but there were no details about how many people were wounded or killed, if any, in those incidents. Three insurgents were reportedly killed in a shootout with police in the city of Nazran on September 14 (www.kavkaz-uzel, September 19).

On September 19, an anonymous Federal Security Service (FSB) source was quoted as saying that among the three rebels killed in a security operation in Dagestan’s Kizlyar district that day was Abdullah Saadullaev, a Sharia judge aka Daud who was the “right hand” of the Dagestani rebel “emir” Umalat Magomedov. The source claimed Daud was found with letters addressed to various businessmen in Dagestan threatening them and ordering them to hand over 100,000 Euros or more (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, September 19).

Nihad Awad, national executive director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, spoke in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday about the arrests in Pakistan of five Americans

Police in Pakistan raided a house linked to an Islamic militant group Wednesday and arrested five young American Muslim men from the Washington, D.C., area, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.

One of the young men had left behind a video showing scenes of war, calling for the defense of Muslims and saying that “young Muslims have to do something,” said a person who had seen the video, describing it as a farewell of sorts.

It was the third known case since September in which Americans with ties to the Pakistan-Afghanistan region have been detained over possible terrorist connections.

The men were not accused of any crime, but their intent remained mysterious, and both U.S. and Pakistani officials emphasized that they were still gathering facts.

The five Americans, ranging in age from 19 to 25, were arrested in Sargodha, a dusty city in Punjab province, where several militant organizations with links to al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban operate, according to a senior Pakistani official and a U.S. official in Washington. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

Three of the men arrested Wednesday are Pakistani-Americans, one is a Yemeni-American and one an Egyptian-American, the Pakistani official said. Pakistani law enforcement officers had “continuously tracked” the men from the moment they arrived Dec. 1 at Karachi international airport. All carried U.S. passports, he said.

They traveled to the city of Hyderabad, returned to Karachi, the hub of commerce in Pakistan, and then went to Lahore, the Punjab provincial capital, where they spent five days before going to Sargodha, he said.

They were arrested at a house that was occupied by Khalid Farooq, the father of one of the young men, Umer Farooq, according to an official familiar with the case. The elder Farooq is believed to have ties to Jaish-e-Muhammad, a banned Pakistani militant group, the official said.

Other Islamic militant organizations are also known to operate in Sargodha, including Sipah-e-Sahaba and a splinter group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Both are Sunni Muslim groups that have targeted minority Shiite Muslims and have also been linked to al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

Al-Qaeda, whose leaders are primarily Arabs, and the Pakistani Taliban, led by ethnic Pashtuns, are based in the country’s Pashtun-dominated tribal region bordering Afghanistan. They have spearheaded an insurgency that has killed and maimed thousands of people in suicide bombings and other attacks since 2007.

Many experts are concerned about cooperation between the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda and militant groups based in Punjab that were once used by Pakistani security services to wage a proxy war with India in the disputed Kashmir region.

The U.S. official confirmed that the five men were the same five men from Washington’s northern Virginia suburbs whose families reported them missing last month. Also confirming that they were the missing five men was Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, a Muslim American advocacy organization to which their families turned for help.

CAIR arranged a Dec. 1 meeting for the families with Islamic leaders in northern Virginia, who then contacted the FBI, said Hooper, who declined to give further details.

Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the families of the five men were particularly disturbed to see the video message that one of them left behind.

“One person appeared in that video, and they made references to the ongoing conflict in the world, and that young Muslims have to do something,” Awad said. “The video’s about 11 minutes, and it’s like a farewell. And they did not specify what they would be doing.”

He cautioned against drawing hasty conclusions. But Awad and other Muslim leaders said the case – along with the recent recruitment of young Somali-American men in Minnesota by a violent group in Somalia – suggested that at least a small number of young American Muslims were drawn to extremist views. They pledged to start a nationwide campaign to counter such attitudes.

Hooper said neither the young men’s mosque – the ICNA Center, associated with the national Islamic Circle of North America – nor their families in Virginia supported extremism or violence.

“The Muslim community has taken the lead on this case in terms of taking it to law enforcement,” Hooper said.

Asked for assistance by the FBI, Pakistani security officers tracked the men to Farooq’s house, where they were taken into custody, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.

In addition to Umer Farooq, two of the other men – named in Pakistani press accounts as Ahmed Abdullah and Wakar Khan – were described by officials as of Pakistani descent. Another, Ramy Zamzam, is of Egyptian descent, and the fifth man, Aman Yasser, is of Yemeni descent, according to one official. Some were born abroad, but all are now U.S. citizens, U.S. officials said.

A local imam in the Washington area said that before the men left, they did not seem to have become militant.

“From all of our interviews, there was no sign they were outwardly radicalized,” said Imam Johari Abdul-Malik.

Zamzam is a dental student at Howard University, where he received an undergraduate degree this year with a major in biology and chemistry, according to his Facebook page.

One of Zamzam’s younger brothers, interviewed at the family’s apartment in Alexandria, Va., said Zamzam has a 4.0 grade-point average and is “a good guy.”

An upstairs neighbor, Peter Max-Jones, 16, called Zamzam “very intelligent, very kind, very helpful. Good citizen, all around.” He said Zamzam’s family was “very patriotic, very quiet.”

A U.S. official said there were no apparent links between the men and another American with roots in Pakistan, David Headley. Headley pleaded not guilty Wednesday in a Chicago federal court to charges he helped a Pakistani group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, plot last year’s terrorist strike on India’s financial capital, Mumbai. That attack killed 166 people, including six Americans.

Headley, who was arrested in October, has also been indicted on charges of plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper that published a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. In another case linked to Pakistan, U.S. authorities in September arrested a Colorado airport van driver, Najibullah Zazi, and charged him with receiving explosives training from al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal area and conspiring to carry out a bomb attack in New York.

I would like to wish everyone a blessed Ramadan. As we enter this month, we are encouraged to keep the sufferings of the destitute and starved in mind. Since a good act is appreciated greatly by Allah, it is encouraged to give one’s Zakat in this month.

As I write this email, there has been a severe devastation in Pakistan. Due to the raging water of the floods many people have lost their lives, houses and livestock. The loss of the seasons’ crops is spelling the impending doom of a fast approaching famine. There have been cases of people who stood on the roofs of their houses and were drowned to death along with their small children and wives.

I have been able to find a very reliable person (Haroon Agha) in Pakistan to distribute this year’s Zakat. I would wish that everyone who gets this message pool something in by Ramadan 15^th so that the money can arrive promptly to those who deserve it. You are encouraged to give Zakat and Sadaqah. The money however will only be given to people who deserve Zakat with a preference to those who have been hard hit by the floods.

Please reply to this email or see me in person to contribute to this cause.

Hassan Mian.

A British court convicted Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, of conspiring to activate bombs disguised as soft drinks, and later boasting in videos there would be “floods of martyr operations” that would leave body parts scattered in the streets. “Don’t mess with Muslims,” Hussain threatened.

I will not be surprised if Islamist leaders in the U. K. and North America now line up at the mics and issue the familiar denunciations of terrorism accompanied by the oft-repeated claim that “Islam is a religion of peace.” I say to them, this is not enough. Now is the time to say loudly, the doctrine of jihad is outdated and needs to be abandoned.

However, instead of distancing themselves from jihad, too many Muslim leaders are defending it by hiding behind its supposedly peaceful nature. Many take to the pulpit and state with disarming smiles and polite language that jihad is a peaceful exertion of spiritual warfare waged against oneself–against one’s ego and against one’s evil intentions, a sort of a cleansing of the soul. This is all said to be true because after returning from a battle, the Prophet told his colleagues: “You are returning from a lesser jihad to a greater jihad,” and when asked to clarify, he said the greater jihad “is the jihad against your passionate souls.”

But make no mistake: The jihad that Osama bin Laden and these three now-convicted British lieutenants wish to launch on British and Canadian citizens is the lesser jihad.

The jihad that convicted Ottawa terrorist Momin Khawaja talked about in his musings is the jihad of warfare, as clearly enunciated by such 20th-century Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood as Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna, and Pakistan’s Abu Ala Maudoodi.

This triad of Islamist gurus may be dead, but their ideological inspiration of the world jihadi movements is alive with their apologists in Canada. It is not what the Koran says that matters; it is how Mr. Qutb, Mr. Banna and Mr. Maudoodi interpret the Koran for the jihadis that needs to be discussed.

In the fall of 2007, Islamists set up a stand at Toronto’s annual Word on the Street book festival where they distributed a free booklet titled Towards Understanding Islam, written by Mr. Maudoodi. In the booklet, Mr. Maudoodi exhorts ordinary Muslims to launch jihad, as in armed struggle, against non-Muslims.

“Jihad is part of this overall defence of Islam,” he writes. In case the reader is left with any doubt about the meaning of the word “jihad,” Mr. Maudoodi clarifies: “In the language of the Divine Law, this word [jihad] is used specifically for the war that is waged solely in the name of God against those who perpetrate oppression as enemies of Islam. This supreme sacrifice is the responsibility of all Muslims.”

Mr. Maudoodi goes on to label Muslims who refuse the call to armed jihad as apostates: “Jihad is as much a primary duty as are daily prayers or fasting. One who avoids it is a sinner. His every claim to being a Muslim is doubtful. He is plainly a hypocrite who fails in the test of sincerity and all his acts of worship are a sham, a worthless, hollow show of deception.”

If Muslim countries do not go to war against the enemies of Islam, Mr. Maudoodi says a worldwide uprising by ordinary Muslims is the answer. He writes: “Muslims of the whole world must fight the common enemy.”

Does it surprise anyone that ordinary Muslims in Britain and Canada have rallied to his call and declared jihad against their own countries of birth?

If Mr. Maudoodi’s exhortations to jihad are not enough, we have the words of the late Hassan al-Banna being distributed in our schools and universities. Mr. Banna makes it quite clear that the word “jihad” means armed conflict. He mocks the concept of the lesser and greater jihad, suggesting that this theory is a conspiracy so “Muslims should become negligent.”

In addition, here is what Mr. Qutb, another Egyptian stalwart of the Islamist movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, writes in his classic book Milestones: “Any place where Islamic shariah is not enforced and where Islam is not dominant becomes the Home of Hostility (Dar-ul-Harb). … A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it, whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interests are located.”

Sayyid Qutb reduces the message of Islam to the rejection of all laws made by parliaments. He says: “The basis of the message [Islam] is that one should accept the shariah without any question and reject all other laws in any shape or form. This is Islam.”

Unless the leaders of British, American and Canadian mosques, as well as the Islamic organizations in these countries, denounce the doctrine of jihad as pronounced by the Muslim Brotherhood, and distance themselves from the ideology of Messrs. Qutb, Banna and Maudoodi, the insistence that “jihad means peace” will sound hollow. It will merely reinforce the suspicions of many Canadians who feel some overseas groups are pulling the strings in this carefully staged puppet show.

Now is the time for Islamic organizations to state flatly in their weekly sermons from the pulpit: Like slavery and concubinage, the doctrine of armed jihad is obsolete. If they do not, their public utterances should be viewed with suspicion and politicians of all stripes must lay down the law.

Canadian captive Omar Khadr at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Abdullah Khadr broke down in a Toronto court Tuesday, saying he told authorities in Pakistan he had bought weapons for Al Qaeda because he feared if he didn’t say that, his sister would be raped.

The 28-year-old, who is fighting extradition to the United States on terrorism charges, said he invented stories because it was the only way to stop his alleged torture by Pakistani and U.S. officials.

Khadr alleges in an affidavit that during his 14 months in detention, Pakistani officers beat him and penetrated him with a stick and American officials threatened to arrest his sister and have done to her what had been done to him.

While testifying, the eldest son of the infamous Khadr family became choked up and wiped away tears.

“(The Americans) told me that if I didn’t confess … they would bring my sister and do terrible things,” Khadr told Crown prosecutor Howard Piafsky.

An FBI affidavit says the interview team “never threatened to harm or retaliate against Khadr, his sister or any family member if he did not give satisfactory answers.

“It also never threatened to send Khadr or his sister to any prison in Egypt or Uzbekistan, or suggested, directly or indirectly, that he or his sister would be raped,” says the affidavit, part of which was read by Piafsky.

Khadr said he confessed to selling weapons to suspected Al Qaeda member Hamza Al Jowfi because he was reduced to tears and they wouldn’t believe him otherwise.

But the FBI says Khadr never cried and any suggestion he admitted to only minimal involvement is wrong. Instead, “he provided specific and detailed information regarding his relationship and dealings with Al Jowfi,” according to the agency’s affidavit.

Piafsky asked Khadr why he didn’t set the record straight and tell the truth to RCMP Sgt. Konrad Shourie, who interviewed him after his return to Toronto.

Khadr said he told Shourie what he thought he wanted to hear, fearing he’d be sent back to Pakistan.

“You almost predict what they want to hear,” said Khadr, whose father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was a reputed Canadian Al Qaeda financier and friend of Osama bin Laden.

Court saw a videotape of the December 2005 interview between Shourie and a relaxed Khadr, who shares a few laughs with the officer about how to make money by selling anti-aircraft missiles.

Asked about his demeanour, Khadr replied: “I thought Konrad Shourie had power over my life. You do whatever to please the person in front of you. … It’s a defence I built up in Pakistan to try and make the jailers happy.”

The U.S. has requested Khadr’s extradition to face charges of procuring weapons for Al Qaeda and plotting to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.