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I didn't see a thread on this yet!
ZOMFG!
link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...l=chi-news-hed
Seriously...
Why?
And if they succeeded, would it even make CNN?
ZOMFG!
Canada premier a target
Officials: Storming Parliament, beheading leader part of plot
By Carol J. Williams, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times; Tribune news services contributed to this report
Published June 7, 2006
BRAMPTON, Canada -- Some of the 17 men and youths arrested in an alleged terrorism plot planned to storm the nation's Parliament, take politicians hostage and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper unless their demands were met for a withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan and the release of Muslim prisoners, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The accusations delivered to several of the defendants' lawyers in a one-page investigation summary included no evidence to substantiate the charges, according to the attorney for 25-year-old Steven Vikash Chand.
"There's an allegation, apparently, that my client personally indicated that he wanted to behead the prime minister of Canada," attorney Gary Batasar said of the synopsis of the government's case against his client, which he received minutes before the proceedings.
Batasar said he was not allowed to meet privately with Chand and later told reporters outside the courthouse: "This is not Guantanamo; this is Toronto, Canada."
"My client . . . protests his innocence, and that's not being heard," Batasar added.
In his comments before the judge, Batasar said the prosecution is contending that the defendants planned to invade the Parliament building in Ottawa and take hostages to demand that Canadian forces leave Afghanistan. About 2,300 serve under international mandate with the Kabul government's consent.
The defendants, according to prosecutors, planned to demand the release of unspecified Muslim prisoners and to bomb the Parliament building and decapitate Harper and other political leaders if their demands were rejected.
The prosecution synopsis mentioned plans to seize or blow up the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s broadcast headquarters in Toronto, the attorney said.
Harper brushed off the purported plot against him, joking to reporters, "I can live with these threats as long as they're not from my caucus."
Batasar and two other defense lawyers protested the conditions of their clients' detention. Chand and 21-year-old Ahmad Mustafa Ghany surveyed the courtroom and smirked as the charges against them were read. Their hands were cuffed and they were each shackled to a third defendant, an 18-year-old who was a juvenile at the time of the alleged crimes and appeared confused about the proceedings.
A chaotic parade of handcuffed and manacled defendants in white T-shirts and gray trousers was escorted into the small, packed courtroom of Judge Maurice Hudson at the Ontario Court of Justice in this Toronto suburb. Outside, hundreds of reporters swarmed lawyers and defendants' relatives, eager for details of a case that has jolted Canadians and led to criticism of the nation's liberal immigration policies.
Heeding federal prosecutor Jim Leising's appeal for maximum-security confinement, Hudson ordered the 12 adult and five juvenile defendants held in isolation.
Ghany's lawyer, Rocco Galati, protested the conditions, saying he had been unable to meet with his client without security guards listening in.
Bail hearings were postponed until later this month for all 15 defendants who appeared in court. Two of the 17 charged after raids Friday and Saturday didn't appear Tuesday because they are serving sentences at an Ontario prison for trying in August to smuggle weapons into Canada across the Peace Bridge between Buffalo, N.Y., and Ft. Erie.
Few details of the government's case against the purported terrorist cell have come to light, but the alleged plot to attack those in power mentioned by Batasar suggests prosecutors either clandestinely acquired communications or had an inside source providing information, according to national security analyst David Harris.
"One possibility is that they used bugs or wiretaps," said Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and now head of a security think tank. The summary of the prosecution's case might have been deliberately vague to "leave the defense side with questions of what else the prosecutors might know," Harris said.
Hudson ordered the juveniles held in a facility for youth offenders instead of the Maplehurst prison, where the defendants were taken after their arrests. During the raids, 400 officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Security Intelligence Service stormed homes and gathering places frequented by the suspects.
"My client is a very frightened young man," attorney Michael Block said of a 16-year-old defendant who was not identified because he is a minor.
Seven of the 17 defendants are teenagers, and all but two--Qayyam Abdul Jamal, 43, and Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30--are 25 or younger.
All 12 adults have been charged with terrorism under a December 2001 amendment to the nation's Criminal Code in reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
Nine of the men are charged with training for the purpose of terrorist activity and six face accusations that they sought to bomb public targets. Four, including Chand, stand accused of recruiting or training others for terrorism.
Officials: Storming Parliament, beheading leader part of plot
By Carol J. Williams, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times; Tribune news services contributed to this report
Published June 7, 2006
BRAMPTON, Canada -- Some of the 17 men and youths arrested in an alleged terrorism plot planned to storm the nation's Parliament, take politicians hostage and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper unless their demands were met for a withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan and the release of Muslim prisoners, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The accusations delivered to several of the defendants' lawyers in a one-page investigation summary included no evidence to substantiate the charges, according to the attorney for 25-year-old Steven Vikash Chand.
"There's an allegation, apparently, that my client personally indicated that he wanted to behead the prime minister of Canada," attorney Gary Batasar said of the synopsis of the government's case against his client, which he received minutes before the proceedings.
Batasar said he was not allowed to meet privately with Chand and later told reporters outside the courthouse: "This is not Guantanamo; this is Toronto, Canada."
"My client . . . protests his innocence, and that's not being heard," Batasar added.
In his comments before the judge, Batasar said the prosecution is contending that the defendants planned to invade the Parliament building in Ottawa and take hostages to demand that Canadian forces leave Afghanistan. About 2,300 serve under international mandate with the Kabul government's consent.
The defendants, according to prosecutors, planned to demand the release of unspecified Muslim prisoners and to bomb the Parliament building and decapitate Harper and other political leaders if their demands were rejected.
The prosecution synopsis mentioned plans to seize or blow up the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s broadcast headquarters in Toronto, the attorney said.
Harper brushed off the purported plot against him, joking to reporters, "I can live with these threats as long as they're not from my caucus."
Batasar and two other defense lawyers protested the conditions of their clients' detention. Chand and 21-year-old Ahmad Mustafa Ghany surveyed the courtroom and smirked as the charges against them were read. Their hands were cuffed and they were each shackled to a third defendant, an 18-year-old who was a juvenile at the time of the alleged crimes and appeared confused about the proceedings.
A chaotic parade of handcuffed and manacled defendants in white T-shirts and gray trousers was escorted into the small, packed courtroom of Judge Maurice Hudson at the Ontario Court of Justice in this Toronto suburb. Outside, hundreds of reporters swarmed lawyers and defendants' relatives, eager for details of a case that has jolted Canadians and led to criticism of the nation's liberal immigration policies.
Heeding federal prosecutor Jim Leising's appeal for maximum-security confinement, Hudson ordered the 12 adult and five juvenile defendants held in isolation.
Ghany's lawyer, Rocco Galati, protested the conditions, saying he had been unable to meet with his client without security guards listening in.
Bail hearings were postponed until later this month for all 15 defendants who appeared in court. Two of the 17 charged after raids Friday and Saturday didn't appear Tuesday because they are serving sentences at an Ontario prison for trying in August to smuggle weapons into Canada across the Peace Bridge between Buffalo, N.Y., and Ft. Erie.
Few details of the government's case against the purported terrorist cell have come to light, but the alleged plot to attack those in power mentioned by Batasar suggests prosecutors either clandestinely acquired communications or had an inside source providing information, according to national security analyst David Harris.
"One possibility is that they used bugs or wiretaps," said Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and now head of a security think tank. The summary of the prosecution's case might have been deliberately vague to "leave the defense side with questions of what else the prosecutors might know," Harris said.
Hudson ordered the juveniles held in a facility for youth offenders instead of the Maplehurst prison, where the defendants were taken after their arrests. During the raids, 400 officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Security Intelligence Service stormed homes and gathering places frequented by the suspects.
"My client is a very frightened young man," attorney Michael Block said of a 16-year-old defendant who was not identified because he is a minor.
Seven of the 17 defendants are teenagers, and all but two--Qayyam Abdul Jamal, 43, and Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30--are 25 or younger.
All 12 adults have been charged with terrorism under a December 2001 amendment to the nation's Criminal Code in reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
Nine of the men are charged with training for the purpose of terrorist activity and six face accusations that they sought to bomb public targets. Four, including Chand, stand accused of recruiting or training others for terrorism.
Seriously...
Why?
And if they succeeded, would it even make CNN?
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