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.

Ok, well, first of all, it wouldn’t be ‘bizarre’ for me. After all, men used to pay me to do such things to them. But what really stands out with this pity-party is that, well, how come this keeps happening? Maher Arar, these guys… always dragged into Syria for “questioning”. Funny, but none of the Muslims I’ve known over the years - some of whom travel extensively, including to areas like Iraq and Syria - have ever had this happen to them. Which leads me to think that there’s something to what Syria is doing.

“Part of the healing process as a torture victim is to be recognized,” Nureddin told me after lunch one day as we sat in the basement of a church hosting us in Napanee. “The public has recognized us. That recognition means they trust in (my) story.” That was a first for Nureddin, who until then had shied away from sharing his experience publicly.

I smell another $10M payout on the horizon.

(oh, and at least one of them is an “engineer”, which as we know is the Arabic word for “terrorist”)

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