Hope and fear – They were four friends bound for Washington, D.C. to witness Obama’s inauguration. But around the same time they left Ottawa in a rented car, an informant walked into a U.S. embassy with a vague but alarming tip that would ricochet in unexpected directions and change their lives
Ahmed, who cannot be identified, is an Ottawa man of Somali origin who was detained and questioned in Washington, D.C., when the FBI was investigating the threat of an attack on the Obama inauguration.
It was the moment he and three friends had driven almost 1,000 kilometres to see.
Ahmed, a young Canadian born in Somalia and raised in Ottawa, watched intently as Barack Hussein Obama raised his right hand and took the oath of office, becoming the first black president of the United States.
More than a million people stood proudly in the January chill of Washington’s National Mall. The streets of D.C. were filled with 7,500 soldiers, 10,000 National Guard troops and 25,000 police.
The FBI was reported to have 600 agents on inauguration duty, although not all had been assigned to the jubilant crowds. Half a dozen agents had Ahmed and his friends surrounded in his uncle’s living room in the suburbs.
The FBI, Homeland Security and the Metropolitan Police had descended on the home where the Canadians were staying the previous day, guns drawn and sirens wailing. They’d questioned everyone and searched their car. On inauguration day, the agents had returned and the grilling continued: Are you really Canadian? Why are you here? Do you have enemies in Somalia?
A television was on. They paused to watch as Obama was sworn in.
Ahmed felt joy and confusion. “Most of all, I felt sad,” he says. “We should have been there in the crowd.”
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What Ahmed and his friends didn’t know was that some time around Jan. 17, 2009, the day they left Ottawa in a rented Chevrolet Impala, an informant had walked into an overseas U.S. embassy with a vague but alarming tip. The warning, which a Canadian source close to the investigation has confirmed to the Citizen, said Canadian disciples of al-Shabaab, the Islamic militant group in Somalia, planned to detonate high-power explosives at the inauguration.
The alert sparked a massive FBI probe. News of the threat leaked almost immediately, although the Canadian angle has only surfaced recently. The FBI soon determined it was a bogus tip, the result of clan rivalries in Somalia — but not soon enough for Ahmed and his friends.
They fear their names are now on security watch-lists. The only two who have travelled to the U.S. since the inauguration were detained at the U.S. border and questioned for hours about what happened in Washington.
Ahmed is not his real name. He agreed to tell his story only if it left out identifying details. He and his family are deeply fearful of being linked publicly to a terror threat, be it in the secret files of CSIS or the eyes of their friends, neighbours and co-workers.
None of the American or Canadian security agencies involved would comment on Ahmed’s story. But Ahmed wants the story told because he wants to shed light on what happens when you’re collateral damage in the war on terror. He and his friends want back what they had before: Clean records and lives without fear — fear of harassment at international borders, fear of being linked to terrorism, fear of encounters with security and intelligence agencies.
“The FBI told us they were sorry, that it had all been ‘a grave misunderstanding,’” says Ahmed. “I have to make it clear, I don’t object to security agencies doing their job. I’m all for investigating tips. But how credible were those tips?”
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Tags: American, Barack Hussein Obama, Canadian, CSIS, FBI, HOMELAND SECURITY, Inauguration, National Mall, Ottawa, police, Somali, United States, Washington
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