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BRAMPTON, ONT. — The Crown stayed charges yesterday against four terrorism suspects, including Abdul Qayyum Jamal, the 45-year-old once portrayed as the Svengali figure of the alleged 2006 Toronto truck-bomb conspiracy.
A winnowing process has now reduced the original “Toronto 18” down to only 11 still facing criminal charges, most of them now in their early 20s.
In response, some freed suspects and their supporters are calling for compensation and public inquiries, suggesting the whole prosecution case will ultimately prove a sham. Others say it's common for the Crown to fine-tune conspiracy cases ahead of trial.
“The preliminary hearings are the X-rays before the operation,” said defence lawyer Edward Sapiano. His client was one of the four suspects whose charges were stayed yesterday. “This is why we have preliminary hearings.”
All of the four had been previously granted bail, suggesting they were among the more peripheral suspects. Some officials now concede Crown lawyers and police may have cast too wide a net in their initial roundup, but are quick to add that the core conspiracy remains very serious.
The June, 2006, arrests were all triggered by a police sting that involved the alleged purchase of tonnes of fertilizer, which turned out to be fake. Some of the accused are said to have wanted fertilizer to build truck bombs to explode in downtown Toronto. Six suspects remain accused of involvement in the bomb conspiracy, the details of which remain under a court-ordered publication ban.
The other leg of the conspiracy is largely no longer a secret. Some suspects operated an alleged training camp six months before the bust, from Dec. 18 to Dec. 31, 2005.
The camp's existence isn't contentious, but its meaning certainly is.
As the matter heads to trial, court will expend much energy assessing the question: If a group of young Muslims goes into the woods to don fatigues, fire projectiles and hear speeches, does this amount to a crime? Two years into the case, the answer seems to depend on who fired what kinds of guns, who heard which speeches.
Nearly all of the 18 people arrested for the overarching scheme are said to have attended the camp. For some suspects, their involvement remains the basis for criminal charges. Others are off the hook – including Mr. Jamal, the eldest suspect.
It was “just winter camping and the paintball, you heard that in court,” Mr. Jamal said outside, after he signed a peace bond. “Everybody is allowed to do that.”
The father of four didn't elaborate as to why he was playing paintball in the woods with a group of young men half his age. Joined by his wife and two of his children, he called for a public inquiry into his case, complaining of “torture” during his incarceration, which included 13 months in solitary confinement.
One reason the Crown considers the camp a jihadist undertaking was publicly revealed last month. The charges say that at its conclusion, a ringleader urged the attendees to band together to attack the new Rome – an apparent reference to the West or the United States. Asked if he had heard the speech, Mr. Jamal said simply, “I was not there.”
For criminal-justice purposes, details like that matter a lot. Two other suspects, Ibrahim Aboud, 19, and Ahmad Ghany, 23, yesterday signed peace bonds conceding they spent a few days at the camp, but did nothing more sinister than fire paintball guns. Both had received bail within weeks of their arrest.
Yet their lawyers suggest the aftermath of the arrests will linger with them for the rest of their lives. Defence lawyer Rocco Galati read a prepared statement in court describing Mr. Ghany as a gifted student, a volunteer worker, and – literally – a Boy Scout. Today, he is trying to get his life back.
Defence counsel Raymond Motee circulated a statement saying his client, Mr. Aboud, has nightmares about his relatively short stint in prison and will always be treated with suspicion. “His name is on a list somewhere,” the statement says. “… Big Brother will be watching.”
The case of the fourth suspect whose charges were stayed appears very peculiar.
Abdi Mohamed, 26, never attended the camp. He was already in jail for a year at the time of the 2006 roundups, having already pleaded guilty to smuggling a handgun across the Canada-U.S. border.
But the Crown laid charges at the time of the bust alleging that the earlier gunrunning was part of the newly alleged terrorist enterprise. That charge is gone now, at least for Mr. Mohamed. However, his co-accused in the gunrunning case – Mohammed Dirie, a 24-year-old arrested in the same car containing the same weaponry – remains accused of a terrorist offence.
The Crown offered no explanation for this. Dan Brien, a spokesman for the Crown, said only that the peace bonds signed yesterday mean that if the suspects remain on good behaviour and observe their curfews for a year, the charges will be formally dropped.
Charges were stayed against three young offenders earlier this year.
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