The noble mujahid
“Terrorist mastermind given life sentence,” by Colin Freeze for the Globe and Mail, January 18 (thanks to Sounder):
Zakaria Amara, the mastermind of a 2006 terrorist plot to bomb Toronto, has been given a life sentence by an Ontario judge, a punishment that represents the courtroom climax of the so-called “Toronto 18” case.
Mr. Justice Bruce Durno’s decision is the stiffest punishment imposed in the terrorism conspiracy and also the stiffest punishment imposed to date under Canada’s antiterrorism laws, which Parliament passed in the aftermath of al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States.
“What this case revealed was spine chilling,” said Judge Durno, stressing the case should bring the threat of terrorism home to Canadians.
“It cannot be said these things happen only in other countries,” he added as he read aloud his written decision. “These things happen here.”
No kidding, really?
Five years after New York’s World Trade Center towers were razed, a suburban gas station attendant, then barely out of his teens, was inspired by al-Qaeda to follow suit.
Mr. Amara, a Cypriot-Jordanian who had immigrated to Canada in his early teens, hoped to shock Parliament into pulling Canada’s soldiers from Afghanistan.
Police had Mr. Amara under constant surveillance in Mississauga during the months leading up to his arrest, catching him in a relentless pursuit of a singular goal: He wanted to build truck bombs and explode them in downtown Toronto….
In the spring of 2006, Mr. Amara built prototype detonators as he inspired young acolytes and tasked them with obtaining bomb ingredients. His plot was to explode massive truck bombs outside the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service offices, and Canada Forces Base Trenton.
The bomb plot is the crux of the wider case, representing the most dangerous component of the schemes hatched by a wider group of young Islamist extremists who were arrested in and around Toronto….