Canada Opens Khawaja terrorist conspiracy trial in Ottawa
comment by Jerry Gordon
Naresh Raghubeer of the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) called this afternoon to discuss the stunning revelations at the opening of the trial of a terrorist mole inside Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DFAIT), Mohammed Momin Khawaja. Canadian Federal prosecutors laid out a detailed presentation of Khawaja’s exploits today. While being an DFAIT contractor Khawaja was a classic mole and jihadi terrrorist. Khawaja would not have had his trail of international terrorist connections, technical explosive capabilities and jihadi weapons training in Pakistan, uncovered had it not been for an international investigation in the U.K. by MI-5 and in the U.S. by the FBI.
Read this Toronto Globe and Mail report on the opening of the Khawaja trial here.
The U.K. investigations were facilitated by intercepts of email traffic between Khawaja and U.K. Jihadi targets of interest. This afternoon, the prosecution produced a witness, Muhammad Junaid Babar from Brooklyn, New York produced by the FBI who testified to the web of Jihadi connections. This is the first trial to be conducted under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act.
In an exchange of email with Raghubeer of the CCD, I commented:
Not nice to have an Islamist mole inside the Foreign ministry aiding and abetting terrorists furthering Sharia via Canadian legations abroad. Given my experience in 2004 SLA vets deportation matter with Canada Immigration under the Liberals, my suspicion is that there are more of Khawaja’s ilk inside the bureaucracies of the Ottawa government Ministries and some eastern Provincial governments.
As we commiserated on the phone call, this would be the equivalent of Lion McKenzie King, Canada’s WWII PM, permitting Italian fascists and Nazi operatives to get a free pass to sabotage the allied effort against the axis powers. That never happened. Nor should this. But it did.
The Khawaja trial should shake up the Harper government to conduct a ‘cleansing’ investigation of important Federal Canadian, international, immigration and security ministries and agencies. Doubtless, this important Canadian anti-terror trial and its revelations will be a prod for more and thorough-going investigations.
As Raghubeer of the CCD opined:
The Khawaja trial should be a wake up call to all important western nations about has had bored from within.
To that I rejoined:
-
If that could happen in the land of multiculturalism, north of the border, it certainly has happened here in the US.
Stay tuned for more developments in the Khawaja trial from Ottawa.
Crown claims trans-Atlantic terrorism conspiracy
by Colin Freeze, Globe and Mail (Toronto), June 23, 2008
OTTAWA — The trial against 29-year-old Mohammad Momin Khawaja, the first man charged under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act, began Monday morning in a highly secure Ottawa court with an extraordinarily detailed prosecution statement.
Crown prosecutor David McKercher spent nearly 90 minutes laying out the bomb-building, terrorist-training and terrorist-financing charges against Mr. Khawaja, before taking a break. “I’m well over halfway through,” he told Mr. Justice Douglas Rutherford, who quipped he had never seen so detailed a case as the court paused.
In broad strokes, the Crown alleges Mr. Khawaja was involved in a trans-Atlantic terrorism conspiracy, meeting a group of fellow extremists in London in 2002 before learning how to fire AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades at a Pakistan training camp in 2003.
He also allegedly constructed a detonation device he called the “high-fi Digimonster” which was seized from his Ottawa home in 2004.
Momin Khawaja is the first person to be tried under Canada’s Anti-terrorism Act. (Tom Hanson/The Canadian Press)
“The result would be massive destruction and loss of life,” Mr. McKercher told the court, explaining the Digimonster was intended to spark simultaneous explosions around London, including possible attacks on a shopping centre, a night club and a power grid.
Not only did the RCMP seize the Digimonster, Mr. McKercher said, but tests revealed precisely how it was outfitted with signal jammers and encryption codes to prevent a premature explosion. Mr. McKercher added the device was supposed to work on the 916.84 megahertz frequency, indicative of the prosecutor’s keen eye for detail.
Rifles, money and government credentials
The Crown’s opening statement suggests agents watched or listened to just about every significant conversation or meeting Mr. Khawaja had in the six month run-up to his March 2004 arrest. According to the Crown, the Digimonster was seized from Mr. Khawaja’s brother’s room in the family home. Three rifles –including one with a bayonet – were seized from the suspect’s own bedroom along with $10,300 under a mattress, the Crown said.
Mr. Khwaja worked as a computer contractor at Canada’s department of Foreign Affairs at the time of his arrest and Mr. McKercher suggested the suspect used his DFAIT credentials for terrorist activities. The prosecutor told the court Mr. Khawaja sent e-mails about his detonator project to London co-conspirators through a DFAIT computer, that he showed UK customs agents his DFAIT pass when he entered the UK, and that he suggested to his conspirators he could use DFAITs internal shipping services to send goods to the mujahedeen in Pakistan.
Mr. Khawaja, beardless and with long wet hair parted in the middle, simply pleaded “not guilty” in a soft-spoken voice to each of the seven terrorism charges he faces. The defence has not signalled how it will attempt to rebut these allegations.
The court has heard the first witness in the case will be Muhammad Junaid Babar, a friend of the accused who was turned into a government witness after being caught by the US Federal Bureau of investigation. Mr. Babar is scheduled to testify Monday afternoon. (Continue Reading this Article)
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:49 • Uncategorized • opinion • news • Canadian Coalition for democracies • Mohammed Momin Khawaja • Ottawa Canada terrorist trial • Globe and Mail • Naresh Raghubeer • FBI witness • Muhammad Junaid Babar • 0 Comments •
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