Published: September 25,
2008
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/world/americas/26canada.html
BRAMPTON, Ontario
— A judge on Thursday found a youth suspect guilty in a
plot to bomb Canadian government offices and attack the
prime minister, in the first trial of a member of the
so-called Toronto 18.
The judge said there was
credible evidence of a terrorist plot aimed at targets in
North America. But the judge said the man could not be
convicted yet because of a technicality.
The judge’s 50-page
ruling hinged on whether the information provided by a
paid police informant was credible. The judge said that
prosecutors did not have to prove that the suspects were
capable of carrying out a terrorist attack or that there
was a specific plan, only that they could be demonstrated
to be a terrorist group.
Because the man on trial
was 17 years old when arrested, he cannot be identified
under Canadian law. The man, who was accused of
participating in terrorist training, moved to
Canada from Sri Lanka in 1994 and was raised a Hindu.
He converted to Islam in high school and met many of his
accused accomplices, including a man prosecutors depict as
the ringleader, at a mosque in the Scarborough area of
Toronto.
Ontario Superior Court
Justice John Sproat rendered his verdict in Brampton,
Ont., courtroom, saying evidence that a terrorist
conspiracy existed was “overwhelming,” according to the
Canadian Press.
The story that first
emerged about the 18 men and teenagers, all Muslims, who
were arrested in and around Toronto in June 2006, was
deeply disturbing. Police officials and prosecutors told
of plots to bomb government offices in Toronto and Ottawa
as well as a nuclear power station, and of a planned
attack on Parliament with the aim of capturing Prime
Minister Stephen Harper and decapitating him.
But as the judge in this
Toronto suburb prepared to release the verdict on
Thursday, the so-called Toronto 18 took on a less sinister
cast.
Charges were dropped this
year against seven of the defendants. And evidence
presented at the first trial suggests that the group was
long on inflammatory talk about plots but short on the
means and methods to carry them out, and that it may have
been aided — and perhaps provoked — by paid police
informants.
From the first terrifying
charges outlined by prosecutors to the gritty, often
comically deflated details that have emerged in court, the
case of the Toronto 18 seems to fit a well-established
pattern in terrorism prosecutions. Whether the result of
trumped-up charges, conflicting demands of intelligence
agencies or difficulties of trying cases where evidence is
withheld by governments looking to protect their sources
and methods, numerous terrorism trials in the United
States and Europe have similarly foundered over the years.
This month, for example,
a London jury dealt a blow to counterterrorism officials
when it convicted three of eight defendants of conspiracy
to commit murder but failed to reach verdicts on the more
serious charge of a conspiracy to blow up seven airliners
with liquid explosives.
Evidence presented in
court made it clear that, at best, the man was a minor
character in the group.
No matter how minor his
role, though, the evidence presented in the case presents
a broad picture of the months leading to the raids, which,
the police said, were timed to prevent the group from
acquiring fertilizer to create bombs. The evidence was so
broad that a court order prevents the publication of the
identities of other people described in it to avoid
prejudicing later trials.
There was no evidence
offered directly linking the defendant to the bomb plot or
plans to storm Parliament. Instead, most of the case
focused on his attendance at two camps that the police
described as terrorist training sessions but that
prosecution witnesses characterized as recreational or
religious retreats. Both were videotaped by a paid police
informant who was part of the group and who testified that
he choreographed some of the scenes.
Video from a camp north
of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in
a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors
characterized that as special driver training but the
defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than
“cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young
Canadian motorists. Other video from the camp shows
paintball fights, military clothing and members marching
with a group flag.
Video from a second camp
shows participants trying to ford a small stream by
walking across logs (many of them fell in), sitting in a
circle around two machetes (both apparently dull) and a
book on the floor of a tent in what witnesses said was a
bid to mimic online Islamic videos, and people jumping
over a campfire.
Inexperienced at camping
and not fond of the cold, the participants at the winter
camp spent much of their time retreating to the heat of a
nearby outlet of Tim Hortons, the ubiquitous Canadian
coffee shop chain. Both camps provoked reports of
suspicious activity to local police officers who, at one
point, roused a group of campers who were sleeping in a
van.
But a handgun was used
for target practice at the winter camp. Wiretaps and
evidence from two witnesses who were at the camp also show
that inflammatory, if sometimes cryptic, remarks were
made, particularly by the alleged ringleader, who
regularly preached about the need for young Muslims to
avenge attacks on their faith and its homelands.
But whether most of the
campers knew anything about targets in Canada is, at best,
unclear. Conversations about bombings and attacking
Parliament appeared to involve only a small subset of the
group. They showed little planning. When discussing the
attack on Parliament, the group debated whether the prime
minister was Mr. Harper or, as one suspect put it, “Paul —
um what’s his name — Paul loser,” apparently a reference
to
Paul Martin, the Liberal whom Mr. Harper defeated.
One of the suspects
suggested during the talk that the current defendant, who
was not part of that conversation, should cut off Mr.
Harper’s head because he was the only camper who had shown
interest in cutting firewood.
In his closing arguments,
the prosecutor, John Neander, cited the suspected
ringleader’s repeated calls for the destruction of “Rome”
as evidence that the defendant should have known the group
planned attacks in Canada. (Although one witness testified
that when some of the youths at the second camp complained
about Canada, he reminded them about the quality of its
roads, schools and health care system.)
