Fadaei, 17, was arrested last year before he was able to detonate the explosives he’d transported in a Toyota from Kandahar to Kabul in order to kill Americans.

“The message my father left me when he became a martyr was that I should follow him,” Fadaei said, speaking in a matter-of-fact tone while sitting on a thin mattress in a small, dank room in Kabul’s government-run juvenile rehabilitation center.

“I regret my attack failed, but I gained by trying. I’ll decide about trying again after I’m out.”

Next to him sat Esmatullah Bilal, with a crew cut and an Abe Lincoln beard. He got caught with a 26-pound suicide vest shortly before a planned attack.

Bilal, who’s 17 too, doesn’t feel any remorse. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“I want to kill foreigners in Afghanistan,” he told a Western reporter, intensity emanating from his dark eyes. “If you live here, we’ll come after you and kill you. You’re lucky you’re so close and you’re not dead.”