{"id":235493,"date":"2019-10-22T19:46:20","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T23:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=235493"},"modified":"2019-10-22T19:46:20","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T23:46:20","slug":"remains-of-7-canadians-killed-in-ethiopian-airlines-crash-return-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/10\/22\/remains-of-7-canadians-killed-in-ethiopian-airlines-crash-return-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Remains of 7 Canadians killed in Ethiopian Airlines crash return home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The Ethiopian Airlines flight left the capital city of Addis Ababa on its way to Nairobi, Kenya, on March 10. The Boeing 737 Max 8 plane crashed just six minutes into the flight. (File Photo:<\/a> Daniel S.\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO \u2014 A Toronto man saw a months-long wait draw to a bittersweet end on Tuesday as he returned to Canada with the bodies of two relatives who were killed in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane this year.<\/p>\n

Mohamad Ali said he waited seven months before he was cleared to go to Ethiopia and retrieve the remains of his sister Amina Odowa and her five-year-old daughter Sophia Abdulkadir.<\/p>\n

The two were among 18 Canadians who died in March when the plane went down en route to Kenya, killing all 157 people on board.<\/p>\n

Ali said touching their caskets for the first time brought him a sense of lightness, energy, and a measure of peace.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing with them all the way, I feel their presence all over me right now,\u201d Ali said. \u201cThis is very important. It feels good now they are with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mother and daughter were among a group of seven Canadians who were repatriated at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Tuesday morning. But the journey for Odowa and Sophia is set to continue through the week.<\/p>\n

Ali said he plans to fly with his sister and niece’s remains to Edmonton on Tuesday night and bury them side-by-side on Friday in a small Muslim ceremony.<\/p>\n

He said doing so will allow Odowa’s mother and her other two daughters, ages four and eight, to visit her grave and say prayers.<\/p>\n

Ali said the burial will help bring the closure that’s proved elusive for the family since the crash, adding the wait to claim their bodies was particularly trying.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been very unsettled,\u201d he said. \u201cWe couldn’t do a lot of things like move forward because we were on standby the last seven months, waiting for the remains to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ethiopian Airlines flight left the capital city of Addis Ababa on its way to Nairobi, Kenya, on March 10. The Boeing 737 Max 8 plane crashed just six minutes into the flight.<\/p>\n

The incident was strikingly similar to last year’s crash of a Lion Air jet in Indonesia, which involved the same type of aircraft coming to harm moments after takeoff.<\/p>\n

The crashes prompted a widespread grounding of the 737 Max 8 while concerns about its safety were investigated.<\/p>\n

In several lawsuits filed on behalf of Canadian victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, plaintiffs allege the pilots were in a tug-of-war with the plane’s automated flight system, manually trying to climb while the computer caused the craft to dive repeatedly and ultimately crash.<\/p>\n

Canadian victims included a renowned Carleton University professor, an accountant with the City of Calgary and a 24-year-old Winnipeg woman on her way to the United Nations Environment Assembly.<\/p>\n

American authorities including the United States House of Representatives, the Department of Justice and the Transportation Department inspector general are investigating how the Max 8 was certified for flight by the Federal Aviation Administration.<\/p>\n

\u2014 With files from the Associated Press<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2014 A Toronto man saw a months-long wait draw to a bittersweet end on Tuesday as he returned to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":206074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-liam-casey","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235494,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235493\/revisions\/235494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}