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Amr Hamed
Amr Mohamed Hamed (Arabic: 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 EgyptWhile 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 CanadaIn 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.[1] Death and legacyOn 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] References
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