There are reports about a Canadian man linked to two London, Ontario  high school friends who died in a terrorism mission in Algeria.

Amnesty International says Aaron Yoon is serving a two-year jail sentence in Mauritania for having ties to Al Qaeda.

But Amnesty says Yoon did not want the international human rights organization to campaign on his behalf and asked that many details of his case remain confidential -when  a researcher spoke to him several times last summer.

Yoon told the researcher he arrived in Mauritania in  May 2011 to learn Arabic and was arrested in December 2011.

Canadian government officials are citing privacy laws and will reveal little about Yoon’s whereabouts or legal status.