Iraqi treated in Britain for napalm burns is reunited with mother after 30 years
An Iraqi man burnt by napalm as a boy and taken to Britain for treatment has been reunited with his mother almost three decades later.
Amar Kanim, now 40, stayed in the UK after a politician took on his cause and later raised him as her own.
He was 10 years old and playing in a warehouse when it was bombed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, on March 1, 1999.
Doctors were told his mother, three sisters and two brothers had died in the attack.
Weeks later, a British politician heard of Mr Kanim’s case.
Baroness Emma Nicholson was investigating the fate of civilians in the marshes between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers after the first Gulf War.
After meeting the badly scarred boy in hospital in Ahvaz, Iran, she set in motion a major fund-raising drive to pay for specialist treatment in the UK.
Baroness Nicholson and her husband, Michael Harris Caine, gained legal guardianship of Mr Kanim and raised him in Devon, south-west England, where he still lives.
She also set up a charity in his name, the Amar Foundation.
Mr Kanim never heard from relatives in Iraq – even though his case was widely reported at the time. But decades later, he received several Facebook messages from a stranger claiming to be his mother.
“I didn’t believe it, to be honest, I thought it was just a big scam,” Mr Kanim said. The television documentary series
Panorama decided to investigate and spent more than a year trying to verify the claims.
It eventually tracked down some of Mr Kanim’s relatives and arranged the crucial DNA test that proved the woman, named Zahra, was his mother.
She had searched for her son extensively.
“I was scared to come here but there’s nothing to be worried about ... it’s amazing, it’s overwhelming,” Mr Kanim said after travelling to Iraq.
“This has been the best moment of my life really. It’s like a dream come true. I feel like I’m reborn again.”
Robert Cole, from the organisation, says the charity tried to trace the boy’s family in the early Nineties. It was approached by people claiming to be related to him but none of those inquiries bore fruit.
Mr Kanim learnt his younger sister, Zainab, had been killed in the same bombing. But he was reunited with a brother, and the reunion has, by all accounts, been a happy one.
In the programme, his brother and mother were shown comparing a family tattoo and reminiscing about their old lives.
“My son is a hero, a superhero,” Zahra told the BBC.
“He missed me. He cares about me and he wanted to find me. This is all I ever wished for.
“We had wars. So many wars. I lost Amar. I survived, but I was only thinking about Amar. And now he came back, finally. I’m so happy today.
“I would do anything for Amar. Anything.”
Mr Kanim said he will continue to visit his family, who live in the central Iraqi city of Karbala.
He has also agreed to help children facing situations similar to his own. This includes visiting a school for orphans in Basra that the Amar Foundation set up.
Mr Cole said: “It’s perfect for us because he’s been through the experiences which countless generations of kids that we’ve looked after have gone through as well, and so it’ll be fantastic for him to be able to come over to Iraq”.
Baroness Nicholson said she is pleased with the outcome.
“Family is the most important thing in life,” she told the BBC.
“It’s who you are. It’s your identity. From the very beginning, I did everything I could to try to trace any of Amar’s relatives in Iraq.
“I hoped we would find someone but I struggled.”