Ahmad El-Maati

Ahmad Abou El-Maati (born October 1, 1964) is a Canadian citizen who was arrested and detained for two and a half years in Syrian and Egyptian prisons. He had found a Visitor's Map to Ottawa and was traveling to Syria to get married (El-Maati Chronology). This evidence, as well as the post-September 11th fear, led him to be considered a suspected Canadian terrorist (El-Maati Chronology). He is the brother of suspected Canadian terrorist and suspected Al-Qaeda member Amer el-Maati. In 2001 El-Maati was the subject of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation into what appeared to be a terror plot involving an 18-wheeler. He worked as a truck driver. For a detailed account written by El-Maati and legal counsel, see El-Maati Chronology.

Biography

El-Maati was born in Kuwait to Canadian citizens Badr El-Maati, an accountant, auditor and business consultant who originates from Egypt, and Samira Al-Shallash a teacher from Syria. He took five lessons towards a pilot's license before dropping the progam. He was a truck driver in Afghanistan.

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. Ahmad denied knowledge of the map. Police issued a total of seven Search Warrants, without results. 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 Almaki, who were then arrested.

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."

Government Inquiry

The Canadian government has ordered a public inquiry into Mr. El-Maati's and two other men who also experienced detention in Syria.

Books

Ahmad El Maati's story is told alongside those of Abdullah Almalki, Maher Arar and Muayyed Nureddin in Kerry Pither's Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror published by Penguin in August 2006.

See also

The following Canadian citizens have been sent to prisons in other countries under circumstances similar to Arar:

• Abdullah Almalki
• Arwad al-Boushi
• Maher Arar
• Bashir Makhtal
• Muayyed Nureddin

External links

• The Honourable Frank Iacobucci QC LLD, inquiry commissioner. "Internal Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abouz-zElmaati and Muayyed Nureddin". Government of Canada. Retrieved 2008-01-10.
• Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror
• Ahmad El-Maati Biography (PDF)
• El-Maati Chronology (PDF)
• Google Maps satellite photo and map of Tunney's Pasture