BRAMPTON, ONT. — Call it the double-double defence: Would dangerous jihadists take a break from their winter training camp to warm up inside a Tim Hortons?
Defence lawyer Michael Moon raises the question in a new motion concerning the so-called Toronto 18 terror trial. Citing previously undisclosed evidence to be presented at trial, he argues that any schemes of the accused have been grossly exaggerated by informants, police and the news media – and even by the group's own ringleaders.
“In fact this hapless F-Troop, who ventured into the deathly cold of winter without a proper tent … was reduced to sleeping in the vehicles at night to prevent freezing to death,” writes Mr. Moon in a new factum. He adds they went “trooping off to the Tim Hortons multiple times a day for coffee and use of the bathroom.”
The motion was filed yesterday at the courthouse in Brampton, Ont., on the second day of the trial of one young offender. Preliminary matters are being discussed.
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A judge's interim order now, at least temporarily, shields the identities of all accused from being published regarding any allegations heard in court.
The Crown and most defence lawyers support the publication ban, saying it is necessary if the alleged co-conspirators are eventually to get an impartial jury. Mr. Moon argues that this thinking is somewhat misguided: Any attempts to minimize media interest and prejudicial disclosures are doomed.
“There is as much of a chance of the media's interest drifting away from this story as there was of [one alleged ringleader] consummating his phantasmagorical designs,” his argument reads. “NONE.”
To that end, his motion suggests it would be better to clearly lay out the whole case against all accused, good and bad. The argument thus provides a sneak peek into key arguments of the eventual trials: Were the “Toronto 18” talkers or doers? Was the threat they posed fantasy or reality? Who were the players and who was simply along for the ride?
Like the one young offender now on trial, Mr. Moon's client does not stand accused of the core conspiracy: an alleged plot to detonate fertilizer-based truck bombs in downtown Toronto. Only a third of the suspects are charged with this offence.
Police have said the June, 2006, roundup of the suspects was triggered by a staged buy of fake ammonium-nitrate fertilizer.
A paid informant facilitated the sting and it wasn't the first time an agent was used. Six months earlier, another paid infiltrator became a training-camp instructor. This camp, the Crown contends, was the other key conspiracy. Almost all the suspects are charged with involvement in it.
Mr. Moon pins the bulk of the blame on a couple of ringleaders who he contends were “affronted by Canada's presence in Afghanistan” and who were out to find “likeminded Muslims and try to do something about it.”
The defence lawyer diverges from the Crown position when he says the weeklong wintertime excursion was less a jihadist training camp than “a boot camp whose sole function was to look for a few good men and weed out the rest.”
A Crown centrepiece was released this week in the form of a transcript of a rousing speech heard at the camp, where one accused urged the rest to band together and attack the new Rome. “It is compelling theatre,” Mr. Moon's motion concedes. But he goes on to describe the speaker as a “Walter Mitty” figure whose reach exceeded his grasp.
The motion asserts that even a prominent police informant has said the speaker had lots of “fanciful plans” but was without “two cents to rub together.”
The testimony and degree of involvement of that informant, Mubin Shaikh, will be crucial. “It is Shaikh and Shaikh alone who taught everyone at the camp to shoot the handgun,” the motion contends, adding it was the informant who controlled the camp's only firearm, a 9-mm pistol.
Mr. Shaikh is under a kind of trial himself, though outside the courtroom – on YouTube, where a six-part video on the Toronto 18 case, overtly hostile to the informant, is now circulating.
Muslim supporters of the accused are again seizing the opportunity to criticize the police informant. “Was it worth putting innocent brothers who had brighter futures than yours to jail?” one of the more polite YouTube bloggers asks.
In response, a “Mubinoddin Shaikh” posts: “The gun was mine, eh? And that the rest did not know about it, eh? Let's take note of this accusation especially – court will tell us the real story.”
On a similar site he adds that “I am PRAYING the publication ban is defeated so I can say I told you so to the whole community.”
He reassures his co-religionists that he is no sellout: “Islam WILL rule the world just like it did before – but it will not be through violence, cuz that's not how it happened the first time.”
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