Project Thread

The men were held at Maplehurst Correctional Complex.[1][2] Each was also noted as having the name Muhammad in their full name.[4][13]

All of the men had entered the country on student visas between January 1998 and September 5, 2001, and a number of them had cited Ottawa Business College (OBC) as their chosen institution. The former director of the school which had closed in 2001, Luther Samuel, admitted to selling C$700 registration letters to approximately 400 immigration applicants to improve their ability to apply for residence in Canada, and offering small amateurly produced courses across six rented classrooms. When the students expressed fears this was just a diploma mill taking thousands of dollars in tuition money from them, the director assured them they were just in a small branch of a larger downtown school.[2][4] Those who left the school, realising that it was a scam, said they were afraid they would lose their immigration status if they reported the situation to police.[4]

The investigation began when suspicions were raised about Khalid Jahinger, who left Lahore, Pakistan to travel to Nanaimo, British Columbia, on a student visa in December 1998. He moved to Ontario where he studied at OBC and George Brown College. He travelled to Mexico City to apply for permanent residency, which must be done from outside the country, where his C$40,000 bank account — inheritance from his recently deceased father — raised eyebrows and led to the beginning of the investigation.[4] In May 2003, police stormed his apartment and arrested him and his roommate Aamir Nadeem and held them for five months until they volunteered to be deported to end their detention. Upon his return to Pakistan, Jahinger was questioned for eight full hours and released.[4]

The remaining students at OBC were under investigation for months by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Immigration services.[2]

The first 19 arrests, carried out by an anti-terrorism taskforce,[14] occurred on August 14, 2003, targeting 18 men from Punjab, Pakistan and one from southern India.[2]

1. Zahoor Hussain, represented by Jackie Esmonde and released on October 30, but was deported the following April[10]
2. Muhammad Waheed, 23
3. Fahim Kayani, released on C$2,000 bail[12]
4. Imran Khan, 31
5. Sajjad Ahmad,
6. Manzoor Qadar Joyia, 30, lived at Dixon and Kipling,[15] the last man still refused bail up until he became the tenth deported.[16]
7. Yousaf Rasheed,
8. Muhammad Asif Aziz, came to Canada in May 1999,[14] was later caught sneaking back into Canada from the United States in the back of a truck headed to Montreal, and initially gave authorities the false name "Asif Yasin Mohammad", arrested at gunpoint.[2]
9. Kishif Siddique, 29,
10. Mohammed Asif,
11. Mohammad Akhtar, 30,
12. Muhammad Waliu Sidiqui,
13. Muhammad Naeem, doctor[17]
14. Saif Ullah Khan, 41, brother of Aqeel Ahmed
15. Aqeel Ahmed, brother of Saif Ullah Khan
16. Jahan Zaib Sawhney, roommate of Awan, released on C$5,000 bail[12][18]
17. Muddasar Awan, refugee claimant and roommate of Sawhney, student at the University of Windsor for three years, was not home during the August 14 police raid on his house, when he had lawyer Tariq Shah phone police to inform them he wanted to turn himself in when he discovered he was wanted, but nobody returned his call. Later accompanied his lawyer to travel to immigration detention himself.[18]

The later arrests involved the following;

1. Muhammad Nouman, Karachi native who came to Canada to support his siblings after his parents died, worked as a clerk at a grocery store, arrested August 28[18]
2. Anwar-Ur-Rehman Mohammed, 31-year-old pharmacist, had obtained a pilot license and was accused of plotting to attack the Pickering nuclear plant, released on C$25,000 bail[12]
3. Shehzad Khurram Toor[19]

For five days following the arrests, the men were held incommunicado and not allowed access to lawyers.[13] It was ten days before Pakistani consular officials were notified about the arrests.[13]

The men were initially asked to give Canadian interrogators the location of Osama bin Laden, despite the fact they protested that they had never had any contact with militants or been to Afghanistan.[2][13] One was accused of having given money to Global Relief Foundation, a charity later blacklisted for supporting Islamic militancy.[18] An apartment "linked to the men" was also alleged to have had a poster of airplane schematics on the wall, as well as a picture of guns,[14] while another apartment had an "unexplained" fire in the kitchen leading to claims that it "could" have been from testing explosives.[4]

Immigration official Stephanie Mackay stated that several of the men had travelled to the United States between May 2001 and January 2002, noting that the September 11th attacks occurred in that timeframe, leading the National Post to announce a possible link between the immigrants and the terrorist attack.[18]

Aziz was the first of the men to be given a legal hearing, at which he was denied bail.[1] The following day, Mohammad Akhtar was released on C$10,000 bail.[2]

A number of the arrested men appeared "confused" at their bail hearings, and did not have legal representation. Some voluntarily offered to be deported.[2]

Former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director Reid Morden was interviewed by the CBC, and stated that the arrests were legitimate, since the agency needs "only to suspect someone of being a threat before it can act".[1]

Once in Pakistan, Muhammad Asif Aziz, Muhammad Wahid, Kashif Siddiq, Imran Yunus Khan and Mudassar Awan announced their intentions to sue the government of Canada for falsely accusing them of terrorism and ruining their lives.[13][20] Canadian politician Diane Ablonczy argued that the arrests had made Canada less safe, since the embarrassment would leave law enforcement skittish in the future.[12]