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.)
