In 2002, Maher Arar was stopped while on a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport on his way home to Canada. US officials detained Arar for two weeks and then told him that, based on classified evidence, they were sending him to Syria instead of letting him return home to Canada. In Syria, he was tortured and detained in an underground cell - three feet wide, six feet long and seven feet high - for nearly a year. During the first two weeks, he was subject to intense beatings, whipped on his back and hands with an electrical cable, and interrogated. Arar was eventually released without ever being charged with a crime.