[3] He worked as a cab driver in London, Ontario and took lessons towards a pilot's license after a friend suggested there was money to make in air taxis between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto.
[3] In 1988, he traveled to fight with the Mujahideen in repelling the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but contracted malaria within two weeks of arriving and spent the next four months in a hospital in Peshawar, before returning to Canada.
[3] He later worked as a truck driver in Afghanistan,[5] and drove an ambulance and cooked meals for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's army as it fought against the Taliban in Logar.
[3] He later advised fellow Afghan veteran Mohamad Elzahabi to find similar work as a truck driver, and allowed him to accompany his own haul to the southern United States, where he dropped him off.
Following the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, he was interviewed by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agent Adrian White who wanted to question him about the map, and his visit to Syria in April.
He was jailed upon his arrival in Syria, was tortured into making a confession,[5] which he later retracted, that he had been a part of a terrorism plot involving two fellow Syrian-Canadians, Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki, who were then arrested.
In December 2001, CSIS agents Adrian White and Rob Cassolato turned up at the El-Maati home in Toronto, asking Badr to come clean about his sons' locations.
[3] On September 6, 2005, a front-page article in The Globe and Mail newspaper revealed that the map in question was of the Tunney's Pasture government complex in the west end of Ottawa, Ontario.