... upon leaving Toronto, bound for New York:
U.S. border officials boarded the Pakistani politician’s New York-bound American Airlines flight on Friday to escort him off the plane and question him about his views on the U.S. administration’s use of drone warfare.
“I just couldn’t understand,” Khan said in a telephone interview with the Toronto Star after his brief interrogation.
“I was sitting with this guy and he kept asking me these strange questions. Finally, he said, ‘Do you know something about drones?’ And I don’t think he fully understood what he was talking about. It was just so bizarre, the whole thing.”
Khan has been a vocal opponent of the Obama administration’s use of drones to target militants in Pakistan. Earlier this month, he led thousands of anti-war activists in a march to Pakistan’s tribal area.
He again criticized drone warfare during a Thursday interview, calling it “insane” and “immoral” and noting the high number of civilians killed.
“Sheer madness . . . worse, it’s counterproductive,” he told the Star. “All it is doing is creating anti-Americanism. It is helping the militants to recruit people. Collateral damage means anyone losing a family goes and joins the militants.”
Britain’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, one of the organizations that tracks drone deaths, estimates that during U.S. President Barack Obama’s first three years in office, between 282 and 535 civilians were reported killed by drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen — including more than 60 children. The Obama administration’s estimate is much lower.
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