Abdelrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian American businessman who spent the days after Katrina paddling around New Orleans in a canoe, saving elderly people

His efforts were brought to a halt when he was detained by the Bush administration on suspicion of being a terrorist.


He was first imprisoned in Camp Greyhound, the makeshift facility at the bus terminal, then moved to the Elayn Hunt CorrectionalFacility in St. Gabriel. Even as his family searched for him from their exile -- first in Baton Rouge, then Arizona -- and his extended family did what they could from Syria and Spain, he was denied contact with them, as well as other civil rights.

A Muslim, he could not eat the pork that was such a large part of the jailhouse diet; when he fell ill, he was denied medical care. Guards called him "al Qaeda" or "Taliban." When Homeland Security later decided that the department was not interested in him, he was charged with looting.