Zaynab Khadr

In August 2017 it was reported that she lived in Sudan with her husband and four children, but by December 2018 she had moved to Georgia

Her brother Omar Khadr was released to Canadian custody at the end of 2012. In 2014 he was moved to a medium-security prison and released in May 2015. On July 4, 2017, an unnamed government source leaked that the Canadian government would apologize and pay $10.5 million in compensation to Khadr. The decision of Justin Trudeau's Liberal government to award Omar Khadr, an alleged former member of Al-Qaeda convicted of murder (notably, as a minor), with these funds has been highly controversial in the country, igniting resentment and outrage in a segment of the Canadian population.

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

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. They reported that she married again, for a fourth time, and bore two more children.

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. Although Zaynab has indicated a desire to one day return to Pakistan, her Canadian passport remained withheld, for many years, rendering her unable to leave the country. According to Mark Steyn, after the death of Osama bin Laden, Zaynab Khadr was "disconsolate at the death of Osama, and has adopted his mugshot as the photo for her Facebook page."

In July 2008 clips from secret surveillance recordings at Guantanamo of Omar's first visit from Canadian officials were made public. The clips stirred controversy, as they showed Omar being pleased, when he thought he was finally going to get help from Canadian officials; and they showed him weeping uncontrollably when he realized these Canadian officials were security officials, interested only in helping the CIA utilize him as an intelligence source against the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Global TV interviewed Zaynab and her mother who described being "devastated" by Omar's distress.

In October 2008, Zaynab began an 18-day hunger strike on Parliament Hill, where she hoped to draw attention to the government's inaction in bringing her brother Abdurahman back to face trial in Canada.

In their 2008 report concerning Mahmoud Jaballah, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) stated that Omar and his older brother Abdulkareem attended terror training camps. In late October 2010, Omar Khadr pleaded guilty to charges against him in a plea agreement before a Military Commission at Guantanamo, admitting to having received "one-on-one terrorist training from an al-Qaeda operative and that he threw the grenade that killed U.S. Sergeant Christopher Speer". He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment, in addition to the time already served. In 2012 he was repatriated to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Most news stories reported only that she had supported the attacks, mobilizing public sentiment against the family. Zaynab has worked to arrange legal support for other Canadians accused of militant actions in the war on terror, notably attending the bail hearings and preliminaries for the men and youths arrested in Toronto in 2006. Her presence has caused a stir in the media, while she maintains that many of the accused were friends of the family.

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.

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.

In 2005, following the oldest daughter Zaynab's return to the country, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer Konrad Shourie said, "The entire family is affiliated with al Qaeda and has participated in some form or another with these criminal extremist elements".

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."

In 2004, Zaynab appeared in a PBS Frontline documentary entitled Son of al Qaeda, during which she said concerning the September 11th attacks:

Ahmed Khadr was killed in 2003 near the Afghanistan border by what has been described in various sources as Pakistan security forces or a US drone. On April 9, 2004, Maha and Abdulkareem used the family's savings to return to Canada; The politicians Stockwell Day, Bob Runciman and John Cannis were among those in a public outcry calling for the Khadrs' citizenship to be revoked, and for the pair to be deported. Others suggested it was unfair to revoke citizenship from people who held views contrary to the government or majority.

In 2003, Zaynab, her daughter and her mother stayed at a house in Birmal, Pakistan for two days, before their hosts grew wary of American jets overhead. They moved further into the mountains of Waziristan. 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 January 2002, Zaynab took Safia and Abdulkareem to Lahore for a stay at the hospital, where her daughter needed medical attention. Her brother Abdullah later joined them, since he required surgery to remove cartilage from his nose.

In 2002 Omar Khadr was captured in Afghanistan and was detained at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for approximately ten years. His brother Abdurahman Khadr had been arrested and worked as an undercover informant with the CIA while at Guantanamo, and later continued to work undercover in Bosnia.

In late 2001, Ahmed Khadr encountered al-Bahr in Kabul; he advised him that he should either return to his wife and daughter, or consent to a divorce. After receiving written reassurance from Zaynab that she would not seek any form of restitution, al-Bahr agreed to a formal divorce.

Following the Invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the family joined a convoy leaving Kabul to travel towards Gardez. They later discovered that their intended residence had been bombed.

In 1999, Zaynab was introduced to Yacoub al-Bahr, a Yemeni who had fought in Bosnia. He was better-known as a wedding singer in Kabul, Afghanistan. Her father asked the boys of the family to vote on whether he should give his consent to the marriage, and did so after Abdurahman and Kareem voiced their enthusiasm; the younger Abdullah and Omar abstained. The wedding was in Kabul. Both al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden attended. Zaynab later explained that nobody was individually invited, and that word of mouth informed interested parties about the open invitation to their upcoming wedding. The couple moved into a separate wing of the Khadr household.

The family subsequently moved to the Karte Parwan neighbourhood of Kabul and lived there from 1999–2001. The Khadrs were registered as operators of a Canadian charity, and eventually did their work out of their home.

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. Six months after the couple began living in a rented Tehran apartment, Abdullah phoned his father-in-law to report that Zaynab was inconsolable at being separated from her family. The marriage was not working out, and Zaynab returned to live with her family.

In July 1995, her father arranged for the 15-year-old Zaynab to marry Khalid Abdullah, an Egyptian, in December. Her mother began preparing an apartment for the couple in the family's house in Pakistan.

On November 19, 1995 Ayman al-Zawahiri bombed the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan. Named as one of the conspirators, Zaynab's fiancé Abdullah went into hiding. When police arrived eight days later to arrest her father on suspicion of involvement, Zaynab grabbed his rifle and screamed at them, while her mother barricaded the door.

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.

In 1992 the family returned to Canada and lived near Bloor/Dundas following an incident in Afghanistan that left the father Ahmed disabled and needing rehabilitation. The family later left and returned to Pakistan. In 1995 Ahmed Khadr was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan, but was later released.

The family moved to Pakistan in 1985, where her father worked for charities assisting Afghan refugees after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The children went to school there and were also home schooled by their mother. Zaynab has five younger brothers: Abdullah, Abdurahman, Abdulkareem (known as Kareem), Ismail (died), and Omar, and a younger sister.

Ahmed Khadr went to college in Canada, where he met and married Maha el-Samnah. They moved to Pakistan in 1985 to work with Afghan refugees following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Zaynab Khadr (in Arabic زينب خضر) (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.

Zaynab Khadr was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1979, the eldest daughter and first child of Maha el-Samnah and Ahmed Khadr, Egyptian-Canadian citizens. Her father was in graduate school.