Personal Info
- Country of residence: Brazil
Information
Shukri Ahmed Mohammed Abu Bakr Hammad was born in Catanduva , Brazil, on February 3, 1959, to a Palestinian father and a Brazilian mother. He is married and has one son and four daughters. He completed his primary education at Silwad Boys' School and in schools in Kuwait. He completed his secondary education in Kuwait, graduating in 1977. He then attended Monkwearmouth College in Sunderland, England, to study engineering. In 1980, he enrolled at Seminole College in Sanford, Florida. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Orlando College in the United States in 1984 and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Indianapolis in Indiana in 1986.
Abu Bakr became involved in Islamic activism in his early youth, and participated in establishing the nucleus of the Palestinian Islamic student movement in Kuwaiti schools and universities. He won membership in the administrative body of the General Union of Palestinian Students/Kuwait Branch in 1976, becoming the first elected member of the Union. He was also active in Britain, where he participated in establishing the Islamic Association of Palestinian Youth in Britain in 1979. He then moved to the United States, and participated in establishing a number of unions, institutions and associations such as: the Islamic Association of Palestine in North America (IAP) in 1981, the Islamic Society of Greater Florida, the Islamic Association of Palestine in 1983, and the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), which he served as director of between 1985 and 1990. He also served as director of the office of the Cultural Society (an Islamic cultural charity) in Chicago, Illinois, in 1984.
Since 1979, Abu Bakr has been active in organizing conferences and festivals in the United States, which hosted leaders and cadres of Islamic movements in the Arab world and the world at large. He participated in giving lectures and holding seminars on the Palestinian issue and its developments, the Islamic religion, and charitable work.
He founded, along with Muhammad Al-Muzain and Ghassan Al-Ashi, the Occupied Land Fund in the United States at the beginning of the outbreak of the First Palestinian Intifada, with the aim of providing support and relief to those affected in Palestine as a result of the occupation practices. The work of the fund expanded and in 1990 it became the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, and Abu Bakr became the general manager of the foundation, which had a central headquarters in the city of Los Angeles in the state of California and then in the city of Dallas in the state of Texas.
The organization focused its activities in Palestine and worked to provide relief to those affected there, and built a number of charitable projects, including kindergartens, hospitals, headquarters for charitable societies and youth clubs. It provided financial aid to orphans and scholarships to students. It also worked in the relief field in other areas around the world, including Jordan, Lebanon, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. The organization became the largest relief organization in the United States. As part of his work in the organization, Abu Bakr visited more than one country around the world, including Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Abu Bakr suffered during his life; He was first interrogated by US intelligence in 1983 because of his activities serving the Muslim minority in the United States and advocating for Muslim causes worldwide. He was interrogated several times, and the Holy Land Foundation and its staff were subjected to harassment by US authorities from the second half of the 1990s until the US authorities outlawed it, shut it down, and confiscated its assets and funds in 2001, accusing it of funding Hamas. Abu Bakr, along with Muhammad al-Muzain, Ghassan al-Ashi, Abdul Rahman Awda, and Mufid Mashal, were arrested on July 27, 2004, and released a few days later. They were retried in 2007 and acquitted, then retried again in 2008 and convicted. Abu Bakr was imprisoned on November 24, 2008, and sentenced by a US court to 65 years in prison on May 27, 2008. In 2009, he was subjected to harassment and solitary confinement for years in prison. The American authorities deliberately placed him in a prison where the most dangerous criminals in the United States live, many miles away from where his family lives. His daughter, Sanabel, died in 2013 and his father in 2017, and he was unable to say goodbye to them.
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