In her book Guantanamo’s Child about Omar Khadr, author Michelle Shephard explains that the radicalization of Omar’s father (Ahmed Said Khadr) occurred while he was a member of the University of Ottawa’s MSA. Ahmed Said Khadr studied engineering in Ottawa in the late seventies.
Excerpt of Guantanamo’s Child available on Google Books – In May 1978, Elsamnah moved to Ottawa where Khadr would finish his studies, and seventeen months later their first child, daughter Zaynab, was born. Elsamnah delighted in her role as mother and threw herself into domestic life, while her husband became increasingly unsure that he wanted a career in engineering. Khadr had joined the University of Ottawa’s Muslim Student Association, or MSA, a student group founded by members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. The student group started in the United States in 1963 but by the 1970s had established chapters in schools throughout North America. The Muslim Brotherhood was an Islamist group that believed Egypt should be governed by the religious principles of Sharia law. (…) Khadr had arrived in Canada as an observant Muslim, but largely secular in his beliefs. The MSA opened his eyes to the politics of Islam and by the time he graduated he was a proponent of Sharia law.
After his graduation, Ahmed Said Khadr went to Pakistan to run the office of Human Concern International, another Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization. While running this MB outfit, Khadr fought alongside al-Qaeda and was killed by the Pakistani army in 2003. An al-Qaeda website profiling “120 Martyrs of Afghanistan” described him as a leader of Bin Laden’s organization and praised him for “tossing his little child [Omar] in the furnace of the battle.”
Michael Petrou (Maclean’s – August 12, 2012): Canada gives $2 million to group collecting for the charitable alma mater of Omar Khadr’s dad
