OTTAWA — Defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon wrapped up a short cross-examination Wednesday, saying he was going to fight one of Canada's most high-profile terrorism cases with a “scalpel, not a sledgehammer.”
Rather than challenging every statement and scrap of evidence from three days of testimony by the Crown's star witness in the Superior Court of Justice trial of Mohammad Momin Khawaja, Mr. Greenspon attempted to zero in on weak points in the prosecution's narrative.
Mr. Greenspon signalled that he will argue that his client was more of a talker than a doer and was a step or two removed from the British conspiracy.
As well, the prosecution and defence tabled a list of about 20 agreed admissions Wednesday, meaning there will be little legal haggling over the substance of Crown evidence that will be presented starting with wiretaps and video surveillance Thursday. The admissions will cut down on the number of witnesses and shorten proceedings, which are being presided over by Mr. Justice Douglas Rutherford, but will also make the defence's job difficult.
Lawrence Greenspon, second from right, defence lawyer for Momin Khawaja, makes his way to the Ottawa courthouse on Wednesday as Mr. Khawaja's terrorism trial enters its second week in Ottawa. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
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Much of this key evidence against the 29-year-old Canadian terrorism suspect involves tapes made secretly in Britain, where, the admissions state. Mr. Khawaja was first known to authorities as an unidentified suspect codenamed Undue Haste. The British Security Service spotted Mr. Khawaja visiting conspirators in London for three days in 2004, about a month before co-ordinated arrests on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, the admissions state.
Much of what happened in the interim was recorded, a fact agreed to in Wednesday's admissions. The undisputed evidence now includes:
Intercepted conversations from a bugged Suzuki Vitara jeep belonging to a British terrorist ringleader;
A reconstructed e-mail attachment from a British Internet café, an image entitled Hi-Fi Digimonster, or the name of the prototype detonation device that Mr. Khawaja had allegedly been working on in Canada;
Three working assault rifles seized from inside the Khawaja family home in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans on the day the suspect was arrested;
Messages from eight intercepted e-mail accounts that Mr. Khawaja used or had corresponded with;
Six hundred pounds of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer seized in Britain, the substance being a frequent ingredient of improvised bombs.
In his cross-examination Wednesday, Mr. Greenspon drew from the star witness an admission that he has no specific knowledge linking Mr. Khawaja to any British bomb plot.
“You never discussed the U.K. plot with Momin [Khawaja]?” Mr. Greenspon asked.
“No,” replied the witness, Mohammed Junaid Babar.
Mr. Babar, a 33-year-old native of Queens, N.Y., has pleaded guilty to terrorism offences in the United States. He is testifying against men he knew in Canada and Britain in an attempt to reduce a possible 70-year prison sentence.
Mr. Babar has previously testified that he is an extremist who decided to join al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, even though his mother narrowly escaped the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. He said his ultimate goal was to help shape the strategy of al-Qaeda's global jihad against the West.
Mr. Babar testified that he met Mr. Khawaja twice in Pakistan as they travelled to a terrorist training camp in 2003. He also said he heard Mr. Khawaja brainstorm terrorist plots.
Mr. Greenspon did not directly challenge testimony about the trips to Pakistan and e-mail correspondence between Mr. Babar and Mr. Khawaja. However, he suggested there was room for interpretation on some key issues.
Under questioning Wednesday, Mr. Babar conceded that the term jihad means different things to different people, from an armed struggle against the West to a Muslim's struggle for inner peace. Mr. Babar also conceded that “ideas” are different from “plots” and that some terrorist schemes he heard Mr. Khawaja speak of never amounted to anything.
Mr. Babar also admitted he is co-operating with authorities in the hope of obtaining his release from custody as early as next year, rather than being imprisoned until the 2060s.
Mr. Greenspon focused on that plea deal, implying it might have given the witness a reason to lie.
When Mr. Babar decided to talk to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, he implicated himself in two assassination conspiracies targeting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The defence drew out admissions that such schemes could be considered a capital crime in Pakistan.
“I think he made a very good trade, don't you?” Mr. Greenspon said outside court after finishing his cross-examination.
