Committed to Fundamentalist Jihad

"They have said things that was not very smart — that they shouldn’t have said. They’re very opinionated."

"I think that they are good people. (But) they haven’t been able to deal with the past and the present. They’re really struggling. Some of my siblings have completely cut off their pasts and some of them are living in the past and not accepting the present."

Omar Khadr; verbal exercise in mind-boggling understatement

"We are aware of a Canadian citizen being detained in Turkey. As with any case where Canadian citizens request consular support, Canadian officials in Ankara, Turkey, are providing consular assistance."

"To protect the privacy of the individual concerned, further details on this case cannot be released."

Tania Assaly, Global Affairs Canada spokesperson 

"If carrying my father's beliefs -- and I believe that my father had great beliefs and he did not do anything wrong -- is supposed to be poison, then maybe all of us need to have poisoned heads."

Zaynab Khadr 

Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo

It's unclear whether turkish authorities have charged, or are planning to charge, Zaynab Khadr

Canada's infamous Khadr family in the news yet again. The Khadrs are of Egyptian origin, they emigrated to Canada and became citizens of the country. Grandparents, parents, offspring. Ahmed Khadr was involved in 'charitable enterprises', raising funds for his good friend Osama bin Laden. He eventually moved his family to Afghanistan where he sent his sons to Al-Qaeda training camps. There, Omar Khadr, the second youngest of five brothers, learned to shoot and to make explosive devices.

He was arrested and taken to Guantanamo Bay as a jihadist fighter after he took part in a firefight, in rural Afghanistan, shooting two U.S. Army medics, one fatally, the other losing an eye, and was himself seriously injured. American medics saved his life, and an exchange was later agreed on, to return him to Canada to be incarcerated for the remainder of his prison term. He is now at large in the custody of his lawyer with plans to integrate back into Canadian society.

If his sister's and his mother's statements are any indication of how well they have integrated into Canadian society, we may yet continue to see and hear more about this family of incorrigible Islamists than we really care to. Turkish authorities several weeks ago detained a dozen Egyptians who were attempting to cross into Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Several days ago the Toronto Star broke the news that Zaynab Khadr has been detained in Turkey.

Canadian intelligence services have extensive files on brothers Abdullah, Abdurahman, Ibrahim, Omar and Abdulkareem. The family also has another sister, Maryam, besides Zaynab. Married off by her father whom she faithfully venerates, to men he chose for her when she was still in her teens, she has in total had no fewer than four marriages, all of which have failed. One was to a convert to Islam, son of a federal tax court justice.

That husband was kidnapped with his current wife near Kabul in 2012 and remains a hostage. Another husband was arrested in Pakistan, extradited to Egypt for a terror trial and ultimately sent to prison. Another husband was a Yemeni fighter and it was at this marriage that Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were present, to wish the newlyweds a long and fruitful union.

In February 2005, RCMP officers stopped Zaynab on arrival at the Toronto airport from Pakistan. A Toshiba laptop in her possession was replete with Al-Qaeda videos, weapons information, video clips of the Chechen war zone with Russia and the bombing of a British/American civilian compound in Riyadh Saudi-Arabia in 2003, along with songs such as I am a Terrorist, and Strike and Kill the Infidels.

She had shipped from Pakistan to Toronto luggage that police discovered to contain a mobile hard drive with propaganda videos along with a terrorist training manual, but no charges were laid at the time. She is a committed jihadist, as is her mother and some of her brothers, although one has recanted. She and her family represent a blight on Arab Muslim immigrants to Canada.

Their presence in Canada is a travesty, but the universal medical and hospitalization and other social benefits are irresistible, even to, particularly to, jihadists.  And Canadians are too polite to agitate much over the presence of such Western-democracy-inappropriate Islamist fundamentalist in the country.