This article's lead section may be too long for the length of the article. Please help by moving some material from it into the body of the article. Please read the layout guide and lead section guidelines to ensure the section will still be inclusive of all essential details. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page.(July 2022)
Amro Badr Eldin Abou el-Maati (born May 25, 1963 in Kuwait; also known as Amer el-Maati) is a Kuwaiti-Canadian alleged member of al-Qaeda. He is wanted for questioning by the FBI for having attended flight school and having discussed hijacking a Canadian plane to fly into American buildings.[2] He has been referred to as "Canada's most wanted terrorist".[3]
El-Maati's brother was one of a number of Canadians illegally renditioned to Syria to face torture in the years following the September 11 attacks, ostensibly because of interest in Amer, although officials did not give any reason for their sudden interest and accusations against el-Maati.[4][bettersourceneeded]
The case against el-Maati appears to consist of documents addressed to him being found in an office used by al-Qaeda, although the reporter who found them insisted it was possible they had been stolen by the militant group to commit identity theft.[citation needed] Since then, his brother has questioned whether the false confessions he gave under torture played any role in Amer's continued branding as a "terrorist", despite the fact neither Canada nor the United States seem to have even issued an arrest warrant for him.[5]
El-Maati's father has protested the vilification of both his sons, claiming they were being used by the Department of Homeland Security to keep fear and suspicion high in the United States, particularly against Canadian-Arabs.[6] His opinions were echoed by Toronto cleric, Aly Hindy, who has known the family for years and claimed that the FBI's announcement was "laughable".[7]
Early life
The el-Maati family moved to Beirut,[when?] and both Amer and his brother were enrolled in a Catholic school.[5] Amer immigrated to Montreal in 1981 with his father and brother, until his mother and sister arrived, and the family moved to Toronto, where he attended high school, before returning to Montreal for university.[5][8]
According to the interrogation of Abdullah Khadr in Pakistan, el-Maati had worked as a carpet salesman[when?] after the Mujahideen had denied him a pension due to his 1992 brain injury following a car accident which prevented him from participating in long treks.[9]
In 1996, el-Maati travelled to Surobi to find his younger brother who had spent four years fighting alongside Gulbuddin Hekmatyar against the Taliban.[5] The pair retreated north with Hekmatyar's forces, and then Ahmad went to Tehran to visit their mother and sister, while el-Maati traveled to Peshawar where he began working for the NGO Health and Education Projects International, created by Ahmed Khadr.[5]
In 1998, he obtained a Canadian passport while living in Pakistan.[8] Khadr's son Abdurahman testified in Montreal in the summer of 2004 that el-Maati had given his Canadian passport to a man known as Idriss.[10]
His family claims to have last seen him in 1999, and to have received only a single email from him the following year,[7] showing photographs of the school where he was working for the Canadian Relief Foundation.[5]
After 9/11
Listed among 345 people wanted "for questioning" following 9/11,[7] el-Maati was allegedly seen leaving Toronto on November 9, 2001,[8] although his family maintains they did not see him at that time.[7] He is alleged to have traveled to Afghanistan to help to repel the US-led invasion.[9]
On November 17, 2001, The 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.[5][8][11][12] 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 British Columbia convenience store.[8][12] Rohde reported that el-Maati's identity may have been stolen by al-Qaeda agents looking for an innocent Canadian to impersonate, but the RCMP 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."[1][5]
That month, his younger brother Ahmed was arrested while crossing into the United States. Although he was never charged with a crime, he was falsely imprisoned and tortured for more than two years in a Syrian prison, with the tacit approval of the Canadian government.[13][14] 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.[7] 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.[7] He was then asked to work for his captors, and go find Amer in Afghanistan.[7]
In December 2001, CSIS agents Adrian White and Rob Cassolato turned up at the el-Maati home in Toronto, asking the family patriarch to reveal his sons' locations.[5] 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.[7]
Mr. Williams' allegations about McMaster [are] on par a par with UFO reports and JFK conspiracy theories...that notion that because there are people on faculty from Egypt that McMaster is then a haven for terrorism is not only logically offensive, it smack of racism.
In October, FBI consultant Paul L. 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 was no evidence to support these allegations. The publisher later apologized for allowing Williams to print statements which "were without basis in fact".[5][7]
Around this time,[when?] the FBI had received a tip that a couple resembling el-Maati and Aafia Siddiqui had been seen filming tourist sites around Niagara Falls.[3]
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.[5]
That year, his family reported hearing rumors that Amer had been killed in the opening months of the Afghanistan War three years earlier.[7]
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.[7]
Related Research Articles
Maher Arar is a telecommunications engineer with dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship who has resided in Canada since 1987.
Abdurahman Ahmed Said Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was held as an enemy combatant in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba, after being detained in 2002 in Afghanistan under suspicion of connections to Al-Qaeda. He later claimed to have been an informant for the CIA. The agency declined to comment on this when asked for confirmation by the United States' PBS news program Frontline. He was released in the fall of 2003 and ultimately returned to Canada.
Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah was a citizen of Saudi Arabia and a senior member of Al-Qaeda. He was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in the United States.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is a Tanzanian conspirator of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization convicted for his role in the bombing of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He was indicted in the United States as a participant in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. He was on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list from its inception in October 2001. In 2004, he was captured and detained by Pakistani forces in a joint operation with the United States, and was held until June 9, 2009, at Guantanamo Bay detention camp; one of 14 Guantanamo detainees who had previously been held at secret locations abroad. According to The Washington Post, Ghailani told military officers he is contrite and claimed to be an exploited victim of al-Qaeda operatives.
Abderraouf bin Habib bin Yousef Jdey is a Canadian citizen, who was found swearing to die as a shaheed (martyr) on a series of videotapes found in the rubble of Mohammed Atef's house in Afghanistan in 2002.
Abdullah Almalki is a Canadian engineer who was imprisoned and tortured for two years in a Syrian jail after Canadian officials falsely indicated to the Syrian authorities and other countries that he was a terrorist threat.
Ahmed Said Khadr was a Canadian citizen who began working in Afghanistan in the 1980s. There he has been described as having had ties to a number of militant and Mujahideen leaders in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda. Khadr was accused by Canada and the United States of being a "senior associate" and financier of al-Qaeda.
The Khadr family is an Egyptian-Canadian family noted for their ties to Osama bin Laden and connections to al-Qaeda.
Omar Ahmed Said Khadr is a Canadian citizen who at the age of 15 was detained by the United States at Guantanamo Bay for ten years, during which he pleaded guilty to the murder of U.S. Army Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer and other charges. He later appealed his conviction, claiming that he falsely pleaded guilty so that he could return to Canada where he remained in custody for three additional years. Khadr sued the Canadian government for infringing his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; this lawsuit was settled in 2017 with a CA$10.5 million payment and an apology by the federal government.
Ahmad Abou El-Maati is a Canadian citizen who was arrested, tortured, and detained for two and a half years in Syrian and Egyptian prisons, as a result of deficient information sharing by Canadian law enforcement officials. The Canadian government apologized to Mr. El-maati in 2017, after reaching a monetary settlement with him and two other torture victims, putting an end to nearly 10 years of litigation.
Abdullah Ahmed Said Khadr is a Canadian citizen who is the oldest son of the late Ahmed Khadr.
Mahmoud Es-Sayyid Jaballah is an Egyptian who has been detained in Canada without charge on a "security certificate" since August 2001 due to his association with members of al-Jihad. He has consistently asserted that he does not believe in violence, and just because he phones or visits people, does not mean that he shares their beliefs.
Jaber A. Elbaneh, also known as Gabr al-Bana is a Yemeni-American who was labeled a suspected terrorist by the United States after it emerged that he had attended the Al Farouq training camp alongside the Lackawanna Six, and remained on at the camp after they returned home. He fled to Yemen, where he worked as a cab driver before turning himself in to authorities.
The FBI Seeking Terror Information list is the third major "wanted" list to have been created by the United States Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Investigation to be used as a primary tool for publicly identifying and tracking down suspected terrorists operating against United States nationals at home and abroad. The first preceding list for this purpose was the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, that list was supplanted by the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list, for the purpose of listing fugitives who are specifically wanted for acts of terrorism.
Paul L. Williams is an American author, journalist, and consultant. He was also an adjunct professor of humanities and philosophy at Wilkes University and The University of Scranton.
Carried out by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the 19 November 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan was retaliation against the diplomatic staffers who were accused of gathering intelligence on Jihad factions inside Pakistan. It was the deadliest attack against the Egyptian government, since it had been declared apostate three years earlier by Islamic militants.
Founded in 2001, Project O Canada was a Toronto-based anti-terrorism investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Created in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, subdivisions of the project named A-O Canada and C-O Canada were based in Ottawa and Montreal, RCMP Divisions A and C respectively. By December 2001, the RCMP was shifting its focus from gathering intelligence, to seeking information "in a manner suitable for court purposes".
Amr Mohamed Hamed was a Canadian who died in the American bombing of an Afghan training camp on August 20, 1998, as retaliation for the African embassy bombings.
An Egyptian resident of British Columbia, Essam Hafez Mohammed Marzouk arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1993 as a refugee fleeing persecution in Pakistan. He was one of 14 people subjected to extraordinary rendition by the CIA prior to the 2001 declaration of a war on terror. Marzouk was the contact point for a bin Laden terrorist cell in Canada.
Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi is a Lebanese national who was granted permanent resident status in the United States in 1986, after first arriving on a student visa. During the 1990s, he worked as a small arms instructor at an Afghan training camp when the country was engulfed in civil war among the mujahideen following the Soviet withdrawal. He also fought in Lebanon and Chechnya in the 1990s.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
