Amer El-Maati - After 9/11

After 9/11

Listed among 345 people wanted "for questioning" following 9/11, el-Maati was allegedly seen leaving Toronto on November 9, 2001, although his family maintains they never saw him at that time. He is alleged to have traveled to Afghanistan to help to repel the US-led invasion.

On November 17, 2001, New York Times reporter David Rohde gleaned the location of an abandoned "al-Qaeda office" in Kabul from local Afghans - and reported finding documents belonging to el-Maati including his 1996 citizenship acceptance letter with his Toronto address and his Toronto General hospital card. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigated the office, claiming it had been found by the Northern Alliance, and reported they had found the office, which also contained business cards reading 4-U Enterprises - Amr H. Hamed with the address for a rented postal box in a B.C. convenience store. Rohde reported that Amer's identity may have been stolen by al-Qaeda agents looking for an innocent Canadian to impersonate; but the RCMP decided to assume the worst and informed the Americans, who placed Amer on the FBI Seeking Information - War on Terrorism list, "being sought in connection with possible terrorist threats against the United States."

That month, his younger brother Ahmed el-Maati was arrested while crossing into the United States. He would spend more than two years being abused in a Syrian prison, with the tacit approval of the Canadian government, before being found innocent of all allegations. Syrian interrogators claimed that Amer had been responsible for his brother's flight training, wanting to recruit him into al-Qaeda, and when Ahmed protested that he had abandoned his air taxi career aspirations after discovering he was afraid of flying, they stated that Amer had told him to prepare for a truck bombing instead. Ahmed gave a false confession under torture, stating that Amer had suggested he bomb the Embassy of the United States in Ottawa but that he personally wanted to bomb Parliament Hill. He refused to make any written statement, wishing to avoid bringing harm to his family, but was beaten and forced to put a thumbprint on a confession they drafted for him. He was then asked to work for his captors, and go find Amer in Afghanistan.

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.

In December 2002, the television program America's Most Wanted featured Amer, stating that he was an airline pilot who may have "snuck back into the U.S" to work with al-Qaeda sleeper cells.

In October, FBI consultant Paul Williams wrote a book Dunces of Doomsday in which he claimed that Amer el-Maati, Adnan Shukrijumah, Jaber A. Elbaneh and Anas al-Liby had all been seen around Hamilton, Ontario the previous year, and that Shukrijumah had been seen at McMaster University where he "wasted no time in gaining access to the nuclear reactor and stealing more than 180 pounds of nuclear material for the creation of radiological bombs". He was subsequently sued by the University for libel, as there had been no evidence to suggest any part of his story was true. The publisher later apologise for allowing Williams to print statements which "were without basis in fact".

Around this time, the FBI had received a tip that a couple resembling el-Maati and Aafia Siddiqui had been seen filming tourist sites around Niagara Falls.

In January 2004, State Security officials in Giza, Egypt again interrogated his brother Ahmad, demanding to know where Amer was hiding. 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 May 26, 2004, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that reports indicated that el-Maati was one of seven al-Qaeda members who were planning a terrorist action for the summer or fall of 2004. Others listed on that date were Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Aafia Siddiqui, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, Abderraouf Jdey, and Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah. The announcement prompted Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to announce that neither el-Maati nor Abderraouf Jdey had been in the country in "a while". American Democrats labeled the warning "suspicious" and said it was held solely to divert attention from President Bush's plummeting poll numbers and to push the failings of the Invasion of Iraq off the front page. CSIS director Reid Morden voiced similar concerns, saying it seemed more like "election year" politics, than an actual threat – and the New York Times pointed out that one day before the announcement, they had been told by the Department of Homeland Security that there were no current risks.

On August 21, 2004, both the Nantucket Inquirer and Nantucket Mirror newspapers reported a "possible sighting" of Amer at the Nantucket Memorial Airport, and his photo was distributed to local security and transit workers.

That year, his family reported hearing rumors that Amer had been killed in the opening months of the invasion three years earlier.

In May 2005, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service again visited the el-Maati family, demanding to know where Amer was hiding and suggesting that his family should persuade him to turn himself into Canadian authorities rather than risk worse treatment at the hands of Afghan, Pakistani or American captors, to which they protested that they had not heard from him in five years.