Maha el Samnah

Maha elSamnah has Canadian citizenship and is the widow of Ahmed Khadr, a prominent EgyptianCanadian who allegedly worked for charities for Afghan refugees and was alleged to have been an alQaeda financier. They had two daughters and five sons, three of whom Abdullah, Abdurahman and Omar Khadr attained notability in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Canada in relation to the war on terror by the United States and the George W. Bush administration. She moved to Toronto in 1977, where she met and married the Egyptian immigrant, Ahmed Khadr, in 1979. In the 1980s, together with her husband and first three children, Maha elSamnah moved to Afghanistan, during the Soviet Occupation of that country. In 1995 Elsamnah and her husband founded a Canadian charity with a mandate to provide aid in wartorn Afghanistan and Pakistans Federally Administered Tribal Agencies.

Combined with notoriety about her husband and son Omar, who was held as the youngest detainee at Guantanamo, such statements resulted in Canadian public sentiment turning against the Khadr family. The CTV News reported on April 12, 2004, that her critics had initiated a petition to have Maha and her son Abdulkareem stripped of Canadian citizenship and deported. The petition requested Abdulkareem to be stripped of Canadian citizenship like all his siblings except for Abdurahman, he was born in Canada. In December of 2005, Mahas eldest son Abdullah Khadr was repatriated to Canada after a year of clandestine detention in Pakistan. He was arrested by the RCMP, in front of his mother, at a McDonalds restaurant in Toronto as a result of an extradition request by the United States. Maha pleaded with the Canadian public and government for sympathy and for the remaining members of her family to be reunited.

Source: Wikipedia