The Khadr family () is an Egyptian-Canadian family noted for their ties to Osama bin Laden and connections to al-Qaeda.
Members
thumb|right|300px|Maha (youngest daughter in arms), Zaynab (Abdulkareem in arms), Abdurahman and Abdullah
The Khadr family is composed of:
- Ahmed Khadr (1948–2003), father, an Egyptian-Canadian, killed in 2003, possibly by Pakistani security forces;
- Maha el-Samnah (born 1957), mother, a Palestinian-Canadian;
- Their children:
- Zaynab Khadr (born 1979 in Ottawa), daughter; she now lives in Sudan with her fourth husband and four children.
- Abdullah Khadr (born 1981 in Ottawa), son arrested in Canada in 2005 and held for five years while an extradition request from US was reviewed. Ontario Superior Court ordered him released in 2010;
- Abdurahman Khadr (born 1982), son;
- Ibrahim Khadr (1985–1988), a son who died of congenital heart defect;
- Omar Khadr (born 1986), son captured by American forces following a 2002 firefight and held in Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to 2012;
- Abdulkareem Khadr (born 1989), son, became paralyzed in the attack where his father died.
- A daughter (born 1991).
Zaynab Khadr
Zaynab Ahmed Said Khadr (; born 1979) is the eldest daughter and first child of Ahmed Khadr, an Egyptian immigrant to Canada noted for being a terrorist and senior al-Qaeda member. Two of her younger brothers, Abdurahman and Omar, were held by the United States as enemy combatants in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp after being captured in Afghanistan in 2002.
With her family, she grew up in Pakistan and Canada, as they frequently traveled back and forth. Following a severe 1992 injury that left her father disabled, Zaynab became a "second mother" to the younger children of the family. She was married and divorced three times, and has a daughter from her second marriage.
She and her widowed mother returned to Canada in February 2005. Khadr has since fought for the family members' legal rights to remain there. She has also worked for justice for her brothers. Abdullah Khadr was detained in Pakistan and resisted extradition to the United States; he finally returned to Canada in 2005. Abdurahman Khadr was also detained, but he had claimed to have been working for the United States CIA when he was held as a detainee in Guantanamo Bay detention camp, 2002–2003. In October 2010, her youngest brother Omar Khadr pleaded guilty to charges in a plea agreement, and was repatriated to Canada in 2012 to serve the rest of his eight-year sentence.
On January 31, 2016, Michelle Shephard and Peter Edwards, writing in the Toronto Star, reported that Zaynab had been apprehended, in Turkey for a visa violation.
Early life and education
thumb|left|The 12-year-old Zaynab with her brother Abdulkareem in arms
Zaynab Khadr was born in Ottawa, Ontario
Marriage and family
In October 1997, Khalid Abdullah re-surfaced in Tehran and contacted the Khadr family to reschedule his wedding with Zaynab. Khadr agreed to take his family on a long vacation, which they ended in Iran. They said farewell to Zaynab, by then reluctant, as she started a new life with Abdullah. Her father was killed in October 2003. Zaynab moved to Islamabad, where she lived for some time in a rented apartment with her daughter and younger sister.
In her book Wanted Women Deborah Scroggins describes meeting Zaynab while she was a house-guest of Khalid Khawaja, in Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2004. According to Scroggins, Zaynab told her that the time she lived under the Taliban was "the best five years of my life."
Return to Canada
Although her passport had been revoked by the Canadian High Commission in Pakistan after her father was alleged to be a terrorist, Khadr returned to Canada on February 17, 2005 to be with her mother, and help the legal defence teams of her brothers Abdullah and Omar. Zaynab and her widowed mother Maha are both on passport "control" lists, meaning they will no longer be issued Canadian passports. This is due to the frequency with which they have reported losing their passports since 1999.
When Zaynab returned to Canada, security officials, including Konrad Shourie, met her at the airport bearing a search warrant. It was based on the statement that she "has willingly participated and contributed both directly and indirectly towards enhancing the ability of Al Qaeda." They seized her laptop, DVDs, audiocassettes, diary and other files. The security officials said that, through the computer files, they were able to determine the present locations of multiple al-Qaeda veterans, though they had no evidence to charge her. Zaynab said she had purchased the computer second-hand seven months before her trip.
On June 18, 2005, after the expiry of the three-month limit on holding the items, the court granted the RCMP a one-year extension.
On October 5, 2009, Isabel Teotonio, writing in the Toronto Star, reported on the extradition hearing for Zaynab's brother Abdullah Khadr. She wrote that Canadian officials had seized a hard drive from Zaynab that had belonged to her father.
Apprehension in Turkey
According to a January 2016 report from Michelle Shephard and Peter Edwards, in the Toronto Star, Zaynab left Canada, for Turkey, in 2012, shortly after her brother Omar was returned to Canada, to finish out his sentence.