After spending much of his imprisonment in solitary confinement, in April 2008 his family announced they were pursuing legal action seeking damages; including from the prison where he was incarcerated.
[5] MacAulay had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, dropping out of Grade 10 in Halifax to join the army, and entering a troubled first marriage before converting to Islam and turning her life around.
[6] The media would later point to the fact she wore the niqab face covering, and had campaigned against sexual education being taught in schools without due parental notice of its content.
[7] After volunteering to clean the carpet and the washroom, and make small repairs at the Ar-Rahman mosque in Mississauga,[5] he became an active member and began to teach Tafsir and occasionally led the prayers.
[9] He claims to have been approached several times by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in the years prior to his arrest, and asked to give information about community members, including Imam Aly Hindy, which he refused to do.
[12] Both Jamal and his wife criticised Khan, and requested that the mosque not invite him back as a speaker, since they felt he had misused the religious service "as a political soapbox".
[10][12] Seven weeks before the arrests, Jamal's wife wrote to Khan complaining about the 32nd Brigade training for Operation Talon for deployment to Afghanistan on the property of her sons' Islamic school in Oakville in full combat gear.
[10] Maclean's later reported that "the possibility that a member of Parliament was among those who raised the alarm about Jamal is an intriguing twist in the complex story of how police built their case leading to the arrests".
[7] His outspoken wife continued to garner media headlines, as she alleged that "every Muslim is another potential victim",[16] and that federal authorities had been following her every move, cut the brake lines on a colleague's vehicle and made the computers at Kinko's copy store crash when she tried to send a message requesting prayers for her husband.
[25][26] He cautioned Jamal's wife to "be cautious of what she said", but she nevertheless spoke to several newspapers stating that she believed the couple were owed "millions" in wrongful prosecution damages.
[4] Following the public comments that the couple might seek financial reparations, the Chronicle Herald published an editorial cartoon suggesting that the money would be used to finance terrorism.