PHOTO: From left to right, Muayyed Nureddin, Abdullah Almalki and Ahmad El Maati hold a news conference on the steps of the Prime Minister's office in Ottawa, May 8, 2008. It is a bizarre feeling – eating, walking, laughing with men who have been hung from their wrists and beaten with electric cables. To see them behave so normally despite their experiences is a bit destabilizing. But for five days, that is what I did, as three men – Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin and Ahmad El Maati – travelled from small town to small town, telling Canadians their stories and pushing for a public inquiry into what happened to them. All three men – Canadian citizens, but also Arab and Muslim – were detained and tortured in a Syrian prison on unproven suspicions of terrorism. They accuse the Canadian government of complicity in their torture. None has ever been charged with a crime.

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