Captive in Canada

Wife of release suspect seeks lawsuit

Source: Toronto Star - 17-apr-08

Wife of released Toronto terror suspect seeks suit over husband’s 17 months in jail 

The wife of a homegrown terror suspect whose name was cleared this week after he spent 17 months in jail, many in solitary confinement, said yesterday she wants to launch a lawsuit that would be the “biggest shame and scandal” on the Canadian government.

“I want millions, seriously,” Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal told a Halifax newspaper yesterday.

“I know it sounds greedy, but I don’t care. I want millions for what the kids have suffered and how much we’ve aged in this process.”

Jamal also expressed her outrage to the Star last night, despite warnings the previous day by her husband’s defence lawyer to be cautious of what she said to the media for fear it could hurt the couple’s chance of a civil suit.

But Jamal said she felt compelled to break her silence because of the torment her family has been through since the summer of 2006, when police arrested her husband Qayyum Abdul Jamal and 17 others for allegedly belonging to an Al Qaeda-inspired cell.

“They took two years away from our family life,” she said, adding the ordeal was particularly hard on their four sons, all under 10. “Now I’m mad. Before I was juggling to survive this … I’m not disposable.”

“The children suffered through the raid, I suffered through the raid. His reputation is ruined … In the past two years, we’ve aged about 10 years.”

Although the couple has yet to speak to a civil lawyer, and aren’t even sure who they’d sue, she is determined to seek compensation.

“I don’t want it because I want to be greedy,” she said during a telephone interview from her Mississauga home last night. “Nobody believed Maher Arar was innocent, even when he came back to Canada. The basic assumption is where there’s smoke there’s fire.

“Nobody had sympathy for that man until he was awarded money.”

Arar, a telecommunications engineer from Ottawa, was compensated after the U.S. sent him to Syria, where he was tortured and detained without charges for a year. Following a public inquiry, Arar was issued an apology and an $11.5 million settlement from the Canadian government for its role in giving the U.S. erroneous information.

“That’s why I want to sue,” she said. “I want it to be the biggest shame and scandal against the people who did this.”

Her husband refused to comment last night, saying he needed to speak with his criminal defence lawyer Anser Farooq about what his next move should be.

Jamal said her husband, whom authorities once dubbed the ringleader of the terrorist plot, has a diploma in mechanical engineering and worked in quality assurance for 12 years in Canada. Now he needs to upgrade his quality courses because he’s been off the market for two years. “He lost $100,000 in wages alone.

“Everybody thinks that it’s over, but it’s not over. It’s ruined two years of our lives … And now it’s just all, `Whoops, sorry. See ya.’”

The men were part of the so-called Toronto 18, arrested in a massive police sweep involving more than 400 officers from across Ontario. The men, mostly in their 20s, were alleged to be plotting to bomb several targets such as the Toronto Stock Exchange building and Toronto offices of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which are adjacent to the CN Tower.

Cheryfa Jamal said she wasn’t sure who would be named in the lawsuit, but said she’d definitely include Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton.

Related: Abdul Qayyum Jamal

April 17th, 2008 News | no comments | Email it! |  Print This Post | 117 views