Maha Elsamnah
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Born in Egypt, Maha Elsamnah is the mother of the Canadian Khadr family, and widow of Ahmed Said Khadr.
A shy teenager, Elsamnah moved to Saudi Arabia with her parents as a child, and moved to Canada on August 1 1974 at the age of 17.[1] She attended T. L. Kennedy Secondary School in Mississauga, and hoped to become a doctor.[1] As the only Muslim, she became self-conscious about her hijab and compromised by wearing a scarf over her hair.[1]
Graduating in 1977, Elsamnah volunteered as a camp counsellor at Camp Al-Mu-Mee-Neen near Creemore, Ontario. There she met Ahmed Said Khadr, a friend of the camp founder, a University of Ottawa student who had come to Canada two years earlier.[1] She was impressed by his calmness and thought he was a good listener. The camp's director later described their meeting as "love at first sight".[1]
They married in November, at Jami Mosque in Toronto.[1] In May 1978, the couple moved to Ottawa so Ahmed could finish his studies. In 1979, Maha gave birth to Zaynab.
In 1987, Ahmed convinced Maha to let her parents take care of their sickly son Ibrahim in Scarborough, claiming that she could help a hundred Afghan children in Peshawar by sending one of their children back to Scarborough Hospital for care.[1] With Ibrahim gone, Omar quickly became his mother's favourite child, as she nursed him while walking through camps and hospitals, serving as a midwife.[1]
In January 1988, Maha returned to Toronto with Omar to look after Ibrahim so her parents could visit relatives in the Middle East. He became sick, and was rushed to Centenary Hospital and admitted to the ICU. Brain death was declared the following morning, and Maha consented to having him removed from life support. The next day she bathed the corpse, dressed it in white and brought it to Jami Mosque for her brother to arrange burial arrangements while she booked a next-day flight back to Peshawar.[1]
Accused of helping to finance terrorism, Elsamnah was listed as a joint director of Ahmed's charity Health and Education Project International.[2]
After a series of difficulties obtaining one-way "emergency travel documents", Elsamnah flew back to Canada with Abdulkareem on April 9 2004, greeted by a throng of reporters and government agents at Pearson Airport.[3] Elsamnah and her daughter Zaynab are both on passport "control" lists, meaning they will no longer be issued Canadian passports due to the frequency with which they reported losing their passports since 1999.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Shephard, Michelle, "Guantanamo's Child", 2008.
- ^ Farah, Joseph. World Net Daily, "Family of Canadian teen has extensive al-Qaeda ties", September 6 2002
- ^ CBC, Khadr mother, brother arrive in Canada, April 9 2004
- ^ Shephard, Michelle and Tonda MacCharles. Toronto Star, "Shadow of CSIS will follow Khadr", December 3 2003
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