Now that it can be told - sort of - it should be noted how close a call it was.
When Saad Khalid, one of the notorious and now-shrunken group once known as the Toronto 18, this week abruptly pleaded guilty to participating in a terrorist plot to build and detonate bombs in the country's largest city, it should have been obvious that this was a matter of enormous public importance.
With 12 other adults and five young persons, Mr. Khalid was arrested on June 3, 2006, in the case that was at the time Canada's first brush with the spectre of so-called "homegrown terrorism" and which immediately caused a national and international uproar.
Charges were later stayed against some alleged members, with the accurate moniker becoming the Toronto 11, one of whom, a youth, was convicted last year of participating in a terrorist group; he will be sentenced later this month. Nine other men, all adults, await their trials.
In the intervening almost three years, as the wheels of justice ground - barely - forward, young Mr. Khalid was not only de facto proclaiming his innocence by his participation in the process, but also was properly presumed to be innocent.
Indeed, in the mainstream press and on the Internet, there were many Canadians, commentators and private citizens both, who asserted the innocence of all the accused men in the most vigorous manner possible. A sophisticated Toronto 18 website and a "Presumption of Innocence Project" sprang up, and supporters even organized occasional solidarity rallies at the Brampton courthouse.
Yet when in the face of all this, Mr. Khalid stood before Superior Court Judge Bruce Durno on Monday afternoon to suddenly enter a guilty plea - a shocking turnaround whereby after all the motions and proceedings that had gone on before, he was effectively saying, "Oh by the way, I did do it" - the matter already had been placed under a temporary publication ban by Judge Durno.
The ban went unopposed that day because media outlets, who are by Supreme Court of Canada dictate supposed to be notified in advance by those seeking such bans, weren't notified, as is too frequently the case.
Only yesterday, with defence lawyers who can't be identified according to Judge Durno's latest order arguing that the whole kit and caboodle should be subjected to a ban of longer duration, was there a media lawyer, Ryder Gilliland, who represented the Toronto Star, Sun Media and the CBC, present in court to make the case that the public should know.
Naturally, the details of the defence application - which lawyers brought it or supported it and what they had to say about it and what Mr. Gilliland said to convince Judge Durno to partially lift the ban - are to remain secret until the jury in the trial on the same indictment begins its deliberations.
The whole shebang might have remained under wraps indefinitely and might never have been revealed had The Globe and Mail not learned on the sly on Monday morning that a surprise guilty plea was in the works.
The Globe's Kirk Makin was the one reporter and media representative scrambled to the almost empty courtroom here when defence lawyers for Mr. Khalid and another accused awaiting trial obtained a temporary but sweeping ban on publication before Mr. Khalid formally entered his plea.
Now 22, he pleaded guilty to a single count of participating in a terrorist organization "with the intention of causing an explosion or explosions that were likely to cause serious bodily harm or death" or damage property.
This charge says that he was acting in support of other conspirators whose names are subject to an earlier ban on publication.
