In November 2001, el-Maati flew to Syria for his wedding ceremony and reception. According to his affidavit, Canadian police or intelligence officials questioned him in the Toronto airport, and kept him under surveillance on the plane. 41 When he arrived in Syria on November 12, he was arrested at the airport. 42 He was taken to the Palestine Branch and held in a tiny, underground cell. 43 El-Maati has charged that Syrian prison guards forced him to lie naked while they poured ice water on him, burnt him with cigarettes, and beat him with cables, until he agreed to sign "a false confession of false events…I signed and fingerprinted in order to stop the vicious and constant torture." 44 He told interrogators that he and his brother 45 were planning to blow up Canada's Parliament, and that two casual acquaintances of his, Abdullah Almalki and Maher Arar, were also involved in the plot. 46 El-Maati was transferred from Syrian to Egyptian custody in January of 2002. 47 He has said that Egyptian interrogators, like those in Syria, had information about him that only could have come from Canadian intelligence. They also practiced torture. At a prison outside Cairo "[a]n electric prod was used on [el-Maati's] hands, legs and genitals during interrogations. His hands were cuffed so tightly that his wrists bled." 48 In July of 2002 he was transferred to another Egyptian security facility,