FREEDOM, I'M BACK TO LIFE': CANADIAN RETURNS HOME AFTER 15 YEARS IMPRISONMENT IN EGYPT ON SPYING CHARGES.

Chandrayee Roy Choudhury, Canada: Staring out the window of a Toronto hotel room on a frigid January morning, Joseph Attar is overcome with emotion. After nearly 15 years locked in an Egyptian prison, the chill of Canadian winters is something he wasn't sure he'd ever feel again.



"I can't believe I'm home," he said through tears. "Freedom. I'm back to life, back to life."



Attar — who originally went by Mohammed el-Attar before converting to Christianity — landed safely at Toronto's Pearson airport Friday morning. He has not set foot in Canada since January 2007, when he was arrested in Cairo at age 31, during what he said was a vacation to see family. 



Now, 45, he's home and finds himself in a world very different from what he remembers all those years ago, having spent a third of his life behind bars. His mother and father have since died and he has no family members in Canada.



In Toronto, Attar worked as a bank teller for CIBC.  Egyptian officials claimed he used his position at the bank to obtain information on various accounts for Israel, which they alleged recruited him while he was living in Turkey in 2001.



His trial began in February 2007 and in April of that year, he was convicted and swiftly sentenced to a 15-year prison term based on a confession he later said he made under duress because he'd been tortured.

    One of the last things Attar said publicly from his courtroom cell during his trial was that he had been electrocuted and forced to drink his own urine. Attar was being held in a three-by-two-metre cell in Egypt's Tora prison, notorious for its harsh conditions.