Amr Hamed

Amr Mohamed Hamed (عمرو محمد حامد) (also Amer Ahmed[1]) was a Canadian who died in the American bombing of an Afghan training camp on August 20, 1998, as retaliation for the African embassy bombings.[2][3]

Life in Egypt

While living in Egypt, Hamed had played for the Egypt national basketball team.[4] However, he immigrated to Canada, landing at Lacolle, Quebec and making his way westward to Vancouver, British Columbia.[4]

Life in Canada

In 1998, he co-founded an import-export business named 4-U Enterprises with his "best friend", former Egyptian Essam Marzouk who shared his love of sports.[4][5] The two shared their faith, Islam, openly, and would sometimes disappear into the forests of the coastal mountains for days at a time as a spiritual retreat to memorise the Quran.[4]

Considered to be "naive and inexperienced", he followed Marzouk seeking "the adventure of Afghanistan" and lived for a while with the Khadr family in Pakistan, where he became known for his love of banana splits and sharing their ability to mix the Western world with his current life.[1]

Death and legacy

On August 20, 1998, Al Farouq training camp was bombed by American cruise missiles and Amr Hamed was killed.[1]

In November 2001, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigated claims that the Northern Alliance had discovered an "al-Qaeda office" in Kabul that contained business cards reading 4-U Enterprises - Amr H. Hamed with the address for a rented postal box in a B.C. convenience store.[3][5] The same search also yielded a number of documents belonging to Amer el-Maati.[6]

In 2003, he was referred to by Abdurahman Khadr, who told authorities that "a lot" of Canadians had trained at Khalden, including "a Vancouver man he knew as Amer, who was killed in a 1998 U.S. missile strike".[7]

In their 2008 report concerning Mahmoud Jaballah, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) misidentified Hamed and Essam Marzouk as being the same person.[8]

gollark: There are uncountably infinitely many, so assuming a finite, nonzero sale price for each, I'll have uncountably infinite money.
gollark: I should make apioform NFTs to fund our operations.
gollark: *Bounded* Solomonoff induction? Because that isn't really very good.
gollark: What makes you so sure?
gollark: We do know, it's shown here.

References
  1. Michelle Shephard, "Guantanamo's Child", 2008.
  2. National Post, "Dozens of Canadians join Jihad terror camps", October 22, 2003
  3. Salopek, Paul. Chicago Tribune, "A chilling look into terror's lair", November 18, 2001
  4. Bell, Stewart. National Post, "A model life, a model operative", October 14, 2005
  5. CBC, "B.C. refugee may have terrorist links", November 15, 2001
  6. National Post, "FBI seeks terror suspect with Toronto ID", November 14, 2002
  7. Bell, Stewart. National Post, "'A lot' of Canadians in al-Qaeda", August 1, 2004
  8. Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Summary of the Security Intelligence Report concerning Mahmoud Jaballah, February 22, 2008. p. 33
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