Chris Cornell / Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah (Part 4)
Fragments of a future narrative
“Asking too many questions. Details.” Raheel was listing what made him ill at ease, as his relationship with the informant developed. “Too much information. I never fully trusted the guy.”
Hindsight—the isolation of prison; the bitterness of betrayal—might shape this impression. Dr. Scott Bresler, the psychologist who testified on Raheel’s behalf at his sentencing hearing—and whom the Cornells now distrust—argued their friendship was more profound than Raheel described.
“I think he—he is very attracted to the informant and—and feels supported and—and loved by him, and it’s very meaningful for him,” Dr. Bresler testified. “I think he feels that the informant had genuine concern for him and love—love for him.”
There was little comradeship, Dr. Bresler elaborated, in Raheel’s teenage years. “Chris was really not successful at—at going forward in his development, what we call psychosocial development,” he stated.
His brother, John, found friends and drifted away; conflict marred his relations with his parents. “Chris became much more suspicious of other kids, pulled away from them, isolated himself more, spent more time on the Internet”—and set off on a kind of quest.
“I indeed have been on an intellectual, actually, really more of a spiritual exploration for much of my life,” Raheel wrote from prison. “He studied Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” his father affirmed. “And he converted to Islam.”
Raheel explored politics at the same time—radical currents, like anarchism. “Everything in America is a lie,” he concluded, the more he read. “A way to profit. To control its citizens.”