- Maha el-Samnah
-
Maha, with her daughter Maryam in arms.
Maha el-Samnah (born 1957 in Egypt) is the matriarch of the Canadian Khadr family, and widow of Ahmed Khadr.[1] In 1995 Elsamanah and her husband founded a Canadian charity with a mandate to provide aid in war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Agencies.[2] It was later alleged that this charity cooperated with terrorists.
Contents
Early life
Mohammad el-Samnah, with his granddaughter and great-granddaughter behind.A shy teenager, Samnah moved to Saudi Arabia with her parents Mohammad and Fatmah as a child, and moved to Canada on August 1, 1974 at the age of 17, and her parents opened a bakery at the intersection of Eglinton Avenue and Midland.[3][4] She attended T. L. Kennedy Secondary School in Mississauga, and hoped to become a doctor.[4] As the only Muslim, she became self-conscious about her hijab and compromised by wearing a scarf over her hair.[4]
Graduating in 1977, Samnah volunteered as a camp counsellor at Camp Al-Mu-Mee-Neen near Creemore, Ontario. There she met Ahmed Khadr, a friend of the camp founder, a University of Ottawa student who had come to Canada two years earlier.[4] 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".[4]
They married in November, at Jami Mosque in Toronto.[4] In May 1978, the couple moved to Ottawa so Ahmed could finish his studies. In 1979, Maha gave birth to Zaynab.
Family
Maha in Toronto with her son Omar.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.[4] 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.[4]
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.[4]
When Mohammad Zeki Mahjoub immigrated to Canada on December 30, 1995, he claims that it was his wife, Mona el-Fouli, who was friends with Samnah, and how he consequently ended up living with her parents for three weeks while he found himself an apartment.[5]
1996 confrontation of Jean Chrétien
In 1995 Pakistani security officials apprehended Maha's husband Ahmed.[6][7] Their daughter Zaynab's fiance was believed to have played a role in an embassy bombing. He had been living with the Khadrs, and disappeared after the bombing. Security officials believed that Zaynab's fiance had used one of the Khadr's vehicles in the bombing.
Ahmed spent months in extrajudicial detention.[6][8] When Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien made a diplomatic visit to Pakistan, he found himself unexpectedly buttonholed by Maha, a Canadian citizen, with her children in tow, in front of elements of the Canadian Press Corps.[9] Her appeal to Chrétien to appeal to Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was broadcast on Canadian TV. When she made this appeal Maha only wore a head-scarf—her face was not obscured by a niqab. Chrétien did personally raise Ahmed's detention with Bhutto. Chrétien asked Bhutto to regularize Ahmed's detention; lay charges; schedule a trial—or whether he asked Bhutto to release him. Pakistan subsequently released Ahmed, without charge.
Fall of the Taliban
The family fled Kabul the day before its fall to the Northern Alliance, and made a temporary home in the Logar orphanage the night of November 10.[10] Maha and Ahmed returned however to gather their possessions. While packing, Kabul's walkie-talkie communications ring began reporting that the Taliban had been defeated and the city was being overrun. Running out to their car, they saw wounded men filtering into the streets. Tossing out their computer and a chair, the couple made room in their backseat for three men who had been injured in an explosion. They reached the Logar Hospital at 2am, but were told that only two of the men could be treated. Speeding off with the third, they continued to another nearby hospital but arrived to find their passenger had succumbed to his wounds. Returning to their children at the Logar orphanage, they were informed that Abdurahman had decided to return to Kabul and spend the night with friends.[4]
Accused of helping to finance terrorism, Samnah was listed as the joint director of her husband's Health and Education Project International charity.[11]
In 2003, following the capture of Omar and the departure of Ahmed with Abdulkareem, Samnah took her daughter and granddaughter to a house in Birmal, Pakistan for two days, before their hosts grew wary of American jets overhead, and they moved further into the mountains of Waziristan.[10]
Return to Canada
2004
Samnah after returning to Canada.After a series of difficulties obtaining one-way "emergency travel documents", Samnah flew back to Canada with Abdulkareem on April 9, 2004, greeted by a throng of reporters and government agents at Pearson Airport.[12][13][14] Samnah 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.[15]
In 2004, Samnah appeared in a documentary entitled Son of al Qaeda;
"I like my son to be brave...I would like my son to be trained to protect himself, to protect his home, to protect his neighbor, to see a young girl innocent, being raped or attacked, to really fight to defend it. I would really love to do that, and I would love my son to grow with this mentality...[a]nd you would you like me to raise my child in Canada and by the time he's 12 or 13 he'll be on drugs or having some homosexual relation or this and that? Is it better? For me, no. I would rather have my son as a strong man who knows right and wrong and stands for it, even if it's against his parents."[16]Most news stories arising from the documentary correctly stated that Samnah believed that raising her children in Canada would cause them to be homosexual drug addicts, solidifying Canadian public sentiment against the family.[1][17]
The CTV News reported on April 12, 2004, that her critics had initiated a petition to have Maha and her son Abdel Karim stripped of Canadian citizenship deported.[18] The petition requested Abdel Karim be stripped of Canadian citizenship, even though like all his sibling but Abdurrahman, who was born in Bahrain, he was born in Canada.
After returning to Canada with her disabled son some commentators started to refer to Maha as a "Canadian of Convenience".[19][20]
2005
Maha's eldest son Abdullah Khadr was repatriated to Canada after a year of clandestine detention in Pakistan.[21] He was arrested, in front of his mother, at a McDonalds restaurant in Toronto. According to press reports Maha struck at the police officers who arrested him, but the police did not lay charges against her as well.
2006
Her son Abdullah was held in a Toronto area jail for five years, while his lawyers fought against a request from the USA to extradite him to stand trial in Boston.[21] Hearing were held several times a year, and Maha regularly reappeared in the news when she was interviewed by reporters attending these hearings.
2007
In 2007 Michelle Shephard, author of Guantanamo's Child, reported Maha's comments on the first phone call her son Omar was allowed to make from Guantanamo.[22]
2008
In 2008, Maha was interviewed by the Canadian Press, following the broadcast of controverersial tapes made when Canadian security officials first interrogated her son Omar in Guantanamo.[23][24] The tapes show Omar weeping for his mother when the interrogators left the room. She was later interviewed for You Don't Like the Truth: Four Days Inside Guantanamo, a documentary based on the interrogation tapes.[25]
2009
In 2009 Maha was widely quoted pleading for her son Omar's release.[26]
References
- ^ a b "Khadr family sketches". Metro. 2008-07-16. Archived from the original on 2011-04-19. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.metronews.ca%2Fottawa%2Fcanada%2Farticle%2F84159&date=2011-04-19. Retrieved 2011-04-19. "Elsamnah claims to have no association with al-Qaida, but admitted that when the planes hit the World Trade Center in 2001, she thought to herself, "Let them have it." She is also quoted as having said that she took her family away from Canada in the 1980s because of "drug addicts" and "homosexuals.""
- ^ "The Khadr family: A timeline". National Post. 2010. http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/10/26/the-khadr-family-a-timeline/. Retrieved 2011-04-20.
- ^ Levy, Harold. Toronto Star, "Metro kin 'frantic' over Pakistan captive", December 17, 1995
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shephard, Michelle, "Guantanamo's Child", 2008.
- ^ CSIS interview of Mahjoub, October 5, 1998, p. 2, para. 6.
- ^ a b Rosemary Spiers (1996-015). "Bomb suspect seeks PM's aid to free him from Pakistanis Canadian held without charge in embassy blast". Toronto Star. p. A9. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/access/18555925.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Jan+15%2C+1996&author=By+Rosemary+Spiers+Toronto+Star&pub=Toronto+Star&desc=Bomb+suspect+seeks+PM%27s+aid+to+free+him+from+Pakistanis+Canadian+held+without+charge+in+embassy+blast&pqatl=google. Retrieved 2011-04-19. "Khadr and his wife Maha Elsannah have been appealing to the media, and to the staff of the Prime Minister, who is passing through Pakistan's capital on a trade mission. Officials said last night Chrétien will talk to Elsannah tomorrow 1morning, with the aim of ensuring her husband is getting due process from Pakistani authorities."
- ^ "Visit to Pakistan rocky so far: PM pressing for Canadian's release, end to child labor". Hamilton Spectator. 1996-01-15. p. A3. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/access/510156271.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Jan+15%2C+1996&author=&pub=The+Spectator&desc=Visit+to+Pakistan+rocky+so+far%3A+PM+pressing+for+Canadian%27s+release%2C+end+to+child+labor&pqatl=google. Retrieved 2011-04-19. "Police have identified a number of apparent links between him and militants believed responsible for the bombing. Among them is a man believed linked to a militant Egyptian group based in Sudan who was living at Mr. [Ahmed Saeed Khadr]'s home in Peshawar. He was engaged to Mr. Khadr's 16-year-old daughter, Zaynab, but has not been seen since Mr. Khadr was detained."
- ^ "Canadian aid worker back to jail in Pakistan". Kitchener-Waterloo Record. 1996-01-31. p. F6. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/access/497649631.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Jan+31%2C+1996&author=&pub=Waterloo+Region+Record&desc=Canadian+aid+worker+back+to+jail+in+Pakistan&pqatl=google. Retrieved 2011-04-19. "Prime Minister Jean Chrétien asked Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto about Khadr during an Asian trade mission this month. Bhutto assured Chrétien that Khadr will be dealt with according to Pakistani law and Chrétien said he accepted her guarantees."
- ^ Craig Kielburger (2010-10-17). "Kielburger: Omar Khadr, Jean Chrétien and me". Toronto Star. http://www.thestar.com/news/globalvoices/article/876856--kielburger-omar-khadr-jean-chretien-and-me. Retrieved 2011-04-20. "Mrs. Khadr was pleading the case of her husband. Ahmed Said Khadr was imprisoned in Pakistan for his role in a car bombing at the Egyptian Embassy that had killed 17 people. She claimed he was wrongly accused and was being tortured. I felt sympathy looking into the faces of her worried children."
- ^ a b Jan McGirk (2004-03-27). "The lonely world of al-Qaeda's wives". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2011-04-19. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Fmarried-to-the-jihad-the-lonely-world-of-alqaidas-wives-567789.html&date=2011-04-19. Retrieved 2011-04-20. "When Allied bombs began to rain down on Afghanistan in October 2001, the Arab women in Kabul packed up in haste. Maha and Zaynab escaped from the capital in a convoy to Gardez, in south-eastern Afghanistan, along with Maha's other daughter, Miriam, her granddaughter, Safia, and her youngest son, Abdul Karim. They rode along with the wife and two children of Zawahiri, but lagged behind."
- ^ Farah, Joseph. World Net Daily, "Family of Canadian teen has extensive al-Qaeda ties", September 6, 2002
- ^ Yahoo news, "Two members of family that has been linked to al-Qaida return to Canada", April 9, 2004
- ^ CBC, Khadr mother, brother arrive in Canada, April 9, 2004
- ^ "Khadr mother, brother arrive in Canada". CBC News. 2004-04-09. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2004/04/09/khadr_20040409.html. Retrieved 2011-04-20. "They have been trying for months to get Canadian travel documents so they could return to Canada. Ottawa has been reluctant to grant their requests because the Khadr family has lost several passports."
- ^ Shephard, Michelle and Tonda MacCharles. Toronto Star, "Shadow of CSIS will follow Khadr", December 3, 2003
- ^ "Son of Al Qaeda" PBS documentary on Abdurahman Khadr
- ^ Shephard, Michelle, The Guardian, "This week, a 16-year old boy was seen crying for his mother", July 19, 2008
- ^ ""Deport the Khadr Family", Petition Goes Online". CTV News. 2004-04-12. http://www.halifaxlive.com/deport_04122004_6422.php. Retrieved 2011-04-20.
- ^ "Citizen of convenience? So what?". Montreal Gazette. 2005-03-20. http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/specials/story.html?id=7cca5d02-1e11-4d58-bd64-0dcf30c88206. Retrieved 2011-04-20. "Judging by the reaction of some Canadians to the return of Maha Elsamnah and her crippled son, Abdul Karim Khadr, to Canada, they have failed to meet our minimum expectations of immigrants."
- ^ Daniel Pipes (2004-04-09). "The Khadrs, Canada's First Family of Terrorism, in the News". Daniel Pipes. http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2004/04/the-khadrs-canadas-first-family-of-terrorism. Retrieved 2011-04-20.
- ^ a b "'Have sympathy for us,' mother asks". National Post. 2006-01-11. http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=511454ae-0450-4888-8fe8-b809a419bca4. Retrieved 2010-10-. "Maha Elsamnah says she'd rather be at home celebrating Eid al-Adha, one of Islam's most important festivals. But with two sons in jail—one in Toronto facing extradition to the United States on conspiracy charges and another about to go on trial at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—she and her mother spent yesterday fending off questions about the Khadr family's alleged links to terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden."
- ^ Michelle Shephard (2007-03-08). "Khadr to boycott trial, family says". Toronto Star. http://www.thestar.com/article/189593. Retrieved 2011-04-20. "Maha Elsamnah said yesterday she was surprised how mature her son sounded during the 50-minute phone call on Tuesday and laughed at the Saudi dialect he has apparently acquired when speaking Arabic."
- ^ Colin Perkel (2008-07-15). "‘I don't know if he hears me crying': mother". Globe and Mail. http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080715.wkhadr-family0715/REStory/COLIN+PERKEL. Retrieved 2011-04-20. "In an exclusive interview at the family's east-end Toronto home, Maha Elsamnah told The Canadian Press she felt powerless to intervene as she watched the video of Mr. Khadr, then just 16, weeping for his mother during an interview with a Canadian intelligence agent."
- ^ "Mother of Omar Khadr felt powerless watching video". CTV News. 2008-07-16. http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20080716/mother_Khadr_080716?hub=OttawaHome. Retrieved 2011-04-20. "The mother of Omar Khadr could only sit helplessly and watch Tuesday as her "tiny boy," accused in the death of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, cried out to her in a 2003 recording of a marathon Guantanamo Bay interrogation—her first glimpse of him in more than six years."
- ^ "Kinosmith Presents You Don’t Like The Truth". Le Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. 2010-10-14. http://www.youdontlikethetruth.com/docs/Press_release_KINOSMITH.pdf. Retrieved 2011-04-20. "Maha Elsamnah and Zaynab Khadr, Omar’s mother and oldest sister are also interviewed for the film."
- ^ Michael den Tandt (2009). "Omar Khadr should return to face Canadian justice;". Chatham Daily News. http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?archive=true&e=1119290. Retrieved 2011-04-20. "Omar's mother, Maha Elsamnah—whose plea for Omar's release made headlines this week—was famously filmed by the CBC in 2004, expressing contempt and revulsion for Canada's liberal society."
Categories:- Khadr family
- 1957 births
- Living people
- Canadian people of Palestinian descent
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