A man unexpectedly pleaded guilty on Thursday to leading a plot to blow up at least three prominent sites, including the Toronto Stock Exchange, to create chaos to force Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
The defendant, Zakaria Amara, who was 20 and working at a gas station at the time of his arrest in 2006, is the fifth member of a group known as the Toronto 18 to be convicted or plead guilty in the case. Prosecutors said the others, however, were peripheral players who did not have full knowledge of Amara’s plan to damage the stock exchange, the Toronto office of Canada’s intelligence service and a military base.
Evidently the authorities were much better informed about the plot than were some of Amara’s co-conspirators. An agreed statement of facts presented to a court in Brampton, Ontario, on Thursday showed that the group had been infiltrated by two police informants and that its actions were under intense surveillance by police and intelligence agencies.
As the authorities watched and listened in, Amara organized training camps that featured extremist Islamic teachings and somewhat inept military-style exercises. Among other things, members of the group considered raiding Canada’s Parliament buildings and beheading Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as well as conducting raids on nuclear power stations.
Amara and most of the others were arrested in June 2006 after receiving what he believed to be three metric tonnes of fertilizer for making bombs. He had unknowingly placed the order through a police informant, and what he received was an inert powder.
By pleading guilty to two terrorism charges, Amara faces up to life in prison. Two other members of the group have entered guilty pleas in recent weeks.
Amara grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, a Toronto suburb, and as a teenager he began exchanging e-mail messages with Muslims around the world who promoted violent and radical forms of Islam. He started what became the Toronto 18 with another man who still awaits trial and whose identity remains protected by a court order, the statement of facts that was read in court on Thursday said.
Amara eventually split from his partner to form a cell to develop and carry out a bomb plot that he hoped would cause widespread destruction.
Evidence from the court case indicates that Amara had been known to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service since he was 16. Alarmed by what they found in 2005, police and intelligence agents hired two informants to infiltrate the group. The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, reported last month that the agent who arranged the ersatz fertilizer shipment, Shaher Elsohemy, was paid about US$3.8 million by the government.
The statement said Amara planned to pack three rental trucks with ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It appeared that the bombs were to be detonated on Sept. 11, 2006, in what another conspirator called “The Battle of Toronto.”
One of the targets, the Toronto office of the intelligence agency, is near the CN Tower, a major tourist attraction, as well as the stadium that is home to the Toronto Blue Jays. An explosion was also intended at an unidentified military base in Ontario.
About a month before Amara’s arrest, the police surreptitiously searched his house, where they found a bomb-making manual and a shopping list of bomb ingredients, the statement said. Amara had had business cards created with the phrase “student farmers.”
Six defendants still await trial. Charges have been suspended or dropped against seven other people.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not