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Mahboob explained how he and his family were persecuted, saying:
"It was a combined (American/Canadian/UK) project, my wife and children arrested at gunpoint in Ottawa while I was working in a university in Saudi Arabia. My family home was attacked by 50 - 60 armed (Royal Canadian Mounted Police - RCMP) without any formal search warrant, looking for a bomb," but found nothing.
In fact, Mahboob's door was blown open. Masked RCMP burst in, telling his family to get down on the floor, then asking "Is your house booby-trapped? Where are the explosives?" Of course, there were none nor any booby or other traps.
"Simultaneously, I was arrested in Arabia and jailed for two weeks. The Saudi Intelligence showed me the formal Canadian request, but (Security) Minister (Anne McClellan) and the Government in Ottawa denied" sending it. "The documentary evidence," however, refutes "this public lying." No matter. The damage was done. Canadian and global media reports destroyed his "professional career as a professor in global politics," as well as his son, Momin's, as a software developer.
Government-sponsored media ads and reports vilified him, his wife and children as "terrorists," the same fate as for hundreds of others bogusly portrayed, their lives grievously impaired as a result. A family friend and president of the regional Canada-Pakistan Association, Qamar Masood, believed at the time it was a case of mistaken identity. Importantly, "Just imagine how they're going to live through this ordeal," he said. "And after that, living in a neighborhood with so many eyes looking at them, it's very hard," because of the entire cross they'll forever have to bear.
Mahboob's son, Momin, was falsely accused of a UK bomb plot, a March 31, 2004 Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) report saying he "became the first person charged under Canada's (2001 Anti-Terrorism Act on March 30) when police accused him of terrorist activity in Canada and in England."
Though acquitted on that charge, he was held without trial for over four years, then convicted on October 29, 2008, and sentenced on March 12, 2009, after a bench trial, to ten and a half years (over and above time served) for donating $859 to an Afghan refugee charity, and two other changes, including:
-- "making a device" that, in fact, "was to stop cell phone signals in mosques, academic institutions, hospitals," and other facilities from being identified; and
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