Zaynab Khadr

Who is Zaynab Khadr?

Zaynab Khadr is the eldest daughter and first child of Ahmed Khadr, a prominent Egyptian-Canadian citizen noted for charitable work among Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and suspected of being a terrorist and al-Qaeda member. Two of her younger brothers, Abduramhan 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 twice, and has a daughter from her second marriage.

She and her widowed mother returned to Canada in February 2005, and she 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.