Father of slain Gold Coast jihadi bride launches legal battle over $300,000 life insurance
The distraught father of a woman shot and dismembered fighting for Islamic extremists is demanding his daughter’s life insurance be paid out.
Gold Coast father Mohamed Karroum, 72, claims his daughter Amira, 22 - a former private schoolgirl who was killed in 2014 - was “tricked” into entering Syria at a time before it was illegal to do so.
Mr Karroum, a former Surfers Paradise kebab shop owner, said when his daughter left the Gold Coast she “met some people who lied to her and tricked her” when she began worshiping at an Auburn mosque.
Amira married Yusuf Ali, an Adelaide-born American-Australian citizen in Sydney, who spent five years as an international Al Qaeda emissary before he joined the Syrian war.
Ali, going by the alias of Tyler Casey, convinced Amira to leave Australia in January, 2014.
Mr Kattoum said his “beautiful and loving” daughter was told she would be going to Syria to help with humanitarian work, not fight.
The pair first flew to Denmark where they joined al-Qaida-linked Jabhat Al Nusra, which was fighting ISIS militants.
Three weeks later, Amira and her husband were ambushed and executed by ISIS gunmen in their home.
IntrustSuper reportedly refused to pay out the $300,000 life insurance policy because of Amira’s involvement in Al Qaeda, according to the Courier Mail.
“They will not pay because you are not supposed to travel there but the law came in after Amira was killed,” Mr Karroum said.
“They said you can’t have (the money) because she went to a place she is not supposed to go.
"It was not illegal to go there until a year later, so she has done nothing wrong. (The extremists) got to her when she moved to Sydney at the mosque in Auburn. They all tricked her.
"They shot my little girl in the head and cut her arms off," he said.
"These are the people we are dealing with over there and she just got caught up in it all."
IntrustSuper declined to comment.
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