Ahmed al-Ahmed, the Bondi hero, who took a gun from a shooter amid indiscriminate shooting has a passion to defend people; his family has spoken up as he recovers at a hospital. His cousins said what Ahmed did was a humanitarian act, a matter of conscience and he is very proud that he saved even one life. “When he saw this scene, people dying of gunfire, he told me, ‘I couldn’t bear this. God gave me strength. I believe I’m going to stop this person killing people’,” one of his cousins said. Ahmed is an Australian citizen of Syrian origin who came to Australia in 2006. “My son is a hero. He served in the police, he has the passion to defend people,” his father told ABC. Ahmed’s parents arrived in Sydney only a few months ago from Syria.
‘Beating myself up and crying’
Al-Ahmed’s mother told the ABC she kept “beating myself up and crying” when she received the call that her son had been shot. “He saw they were dying, and people were losing their lives, and when that guy (the shooter) ran out of ammo, he took it from him, but he was hit,” she said. “We pray that God saves him.”Ahmed’s father said his son did what he did, without thinking about the background of the people he was saving. “He doesn’t discriminate between one nationality and another. Especially here in Australia, there’s no difference between one citizen and another,” he said. The Syrian community is proud of Ahmed’s heroic act, Lubaba Alhmidi AlKahil, the media director for the Australians for Syria Association, said. “As Muslims, every time there’s an attack we say to ourselves, oh no, people will say it’s Muslims that are bad,” she said. “We are scared to leave our houses if we’ll be accused.“This is not strange for a Syrian individual, the community is lovely, supportive, with strong bonds. We’ve refused injustice and persecution [in Syria] and it’s not strange that one of us had the feeling: ‘No, I will not watch, I will die to help,'” she said.
