Arrest
El-Maati was stopped at the United States-Canadian Border on August 16, 2001, where customs officials found a map of Ottawa listing both government and nuclear research facilities, which was later found to be a government-issued visitor's map left by a previous driver.
Following the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, he was interviewed by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agent Adrian White who wanted to question him about the map, and his visit to Syria in April.
Claiming frustration with the ongoing police involvement, Ahmad left to Syria in 2001 to complete the marriage ceremonies with his fiancee. The legal marriage papers would enable him to apply for her to enter Canada. He never met her there, and sometime after his arrest her family annulled the marriage.
He was jailed upon his arrival in Syria, was tortured into making a confession, which he later retracted, that he had been a part of a terrorism plot involving two fellow Syrian-Canadians, Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki, who were then arrested.
In December 2001, CSIS agents Adrian White and Rob Cassolato turned up at the el-Maati home in Toronto, asking Badr to come clean about his sons' locations.
On January 12, 2004, State Security offered to release Ahmad to his family if they would give up the location of Amer. Their mother protested that she didn't know where Amer was, and Ahmad was released the following day.
On September 6, 2005, a front-page article in the Globe and Mail newspaper revealed that the map in question was of the Tunney's Pasture government complex in the west end of Ottawa, Ontario. The map, an old version, showed government buildings including a Health Canada virus lab as well as a nuclear research facility belonging to Atomic Energy of Canada. However, these offices had been relocated prior to El-Maati's detainment at the border. They have since been demolished and transformed into parking lots.
- "The Globe and Mail has learned that the map -- scrawled numbers and all -- was in fact produced and distributed by the Canadian federal government. It is simply a site map, given out to help visitors to Tunney's Pasture, a sprawling complex of government buildings in Ottawa, find their way around."
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Famous quotes containing the word arrest:
“One does not arrest Voltaire.”
—Charles De Gaulle (1890–1970)
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)