Canadian Citizen in Egypt Clashes Killed by Sniper

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Asmaa Hussein couldn’t keep herself from repeatedly calling her husband, Amr Kassem, to make sure that he was safe. Mr. Kassem was of an Egyptian decent, but a Canadian citizen residing in Toronto, and could not help but take it on the streets of Egyptian city of Alexandria on Friday to protest against the killing of hundreds during a bloody military crackdown in Cairo earlier in the week.

Mr. Kassem was returning home after attending a funeral of a protester who was shot in the clashes when he decided to join the crowd, while reassuring his wife to stop worrying because it’s a peaceful protest. He promised to soon return home to her and their 9-month-old daughter Ruqaya, but it was only half an hour later, that Mrs. Kassem received a phone call from her husband’s mobile and a stranger reported to have dialed the last-called number to inform of her husband’s death.

She explained that her husband was shot in the back of the head by a sniper, probably because security forces singled him out for his big beard, or wrongly presumed that he was a member of ousted President Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Mrs. Kassem alleged that “he was not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, or involved with them politically. He doesn’t even normally go to protests. He just went out because of what happened in Cairo, to protest the killing of protesters.” She elucidated that “he felt really strongly about the injustice that was happening. He had these principles in his mind. He was just somebody who saw something wrong happening and he couldn’t stay silent.”