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OTTAWA — Police found three rifles, 640 rounds of ammunition and an array of digital electronic components when they raided the family home of Momin Khawaja in March 2004, the Ottawa man's terrorism trial has been told.
They also found a pellet gun and a much-perforated paper target duct-taped to a pock-marked concrete wall in the basement of the house owned by Mr. Khawaja's parents, RCMP Corporal Taro Tan testified today.
But defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon insisted none of the evidence proved his client was part of an alleged plot by Islamic extremists to attack targets in Britain.
All the rifles were properly registered and Mr. Khawaja had a licence to own them, Greenspon noted in court.
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“I don't think that it assists the Crown's case in any way,” he later told reporters. “It shows somebody who was in possession legally of firearms and ammunition and had been involved in shooting and target practice.”
Mr. Greenspon also noted, during his cross-examination of Cpl. Tan, that many of the electronic components were discovered in the bedroom of Mr. Khawaja's older brother Qasim – along with $10,000 in cash tucked under Qasim's mattress.
Asked outside the courtroom if he believes Qasim Khawaja – who faces no criminal accusations and is not on trial – may nevertheless have played a role in the affair, Mr. Greenspon chose his words carefully.
“You'd have to ask that to the Crown,” he said. “Qasim has not been charged. You get some idea of the contents of his bedroom from the evidence today, but I don' know that anything more can be drawn from it than that.”
Momin Khawaja faces seven counts of terrorism-related offences, including a key allegation that he built a remote-controlled electronic detonator for use in setting off fertilizer-based bombs in and around London.
Five of his alleged colleagues were convicted by a British jury last year and sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Khawaja, who has pleaded not guilty to the Canadian charges, is being tried separately by Justice Douglas Rutherford without a jury in Ontario Superior Court.
Previous testimony from Mohammed Babar, a former al-Qaeda operative turned police informer, has indicated that Mr. Khawaja took weapons training at a camp in northern Pakistan a year before his arrest.
Surveillance conducted by the British security service MI-5 – and not contested by Mr. Greenspon – also indicated that Mr. Khawaja showed his British associates Internet-based pictures of a device, dubbed the Hi-Fi Digimonster, assembled in his parents' home in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans.
It's that device, say federal prosecutors, that was intended for use in the British bomb plot. The plan was foiled when police and security officers swooped down on the U.K. conspirators before they could do any damage.
