Captive in Canada

Defence in Toronto bomb plot case counters claims of terror training

Source: CBC News - 26-mar-08
A defence lawyer in the alleged Toronto-area bomb plot case filed a court document Wednesday attacking the Crown’s case as fanciful and based largely on the unsubstantiated allegations of an unreliable police informant.

The defence factum, a summary of the case that lawyers will argue during the trial, takes on some of the more dramatic allegations made in Crown documents submitted on Tuesday.

The factum was filed on behalf of one of the adult accused whose case has yet to go to trial.

The trial began this week of another defendant, who was 18 at the time of his arrest and cannot be named under the terms of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The factum says the defence lawyer will show that a so-called “jihadist” training camp run by some of the accused was nothing more than a screening exercise for possible recruits to Islamic militancy, and few of the participants in training at the camp - near the southern Ontario town of Orillia - knew what they were involved in.

Two of the other defendants who have yet to go on trial ran the camp, the factum says, and concealed its purpose from other participants. Trainees took part in winter camping activities but were so ill-equipped for the cold weather that they spent much of their time in a nearby Tim Hortons coffee shop.

Informant brought bullets: lawyer

The document acknowledges that some firearms training took place, but it alleges that the only person to bring live ammunition to the camp was a police informant. That same informant was the person who actually conducted the gun exercises, the factum says.

In addition, the document alleges that the only source of information about what was happening at the Orillia camp was the police informant. There was no “real time” police surveillance, it says.

Responding to transcripts of audio tapes of a police wiretap that the Crown claims were “damning and disturbing” proof of a militant Islamist bomb plot, the factum filed Wednesday said the defendant was not present at the time that other accused were talking about attacking Parliament and the headquarters of CSIS and the CBC.

The factum concludes with an argument against the Crown’s request for a publication ban on the names of the defendants, or any evidence that might help identify them.

The document says police and government officials have already taken part in “orgiastic and self congratulatory press gathering[s] … during which evermore private details and ‘investigative gossip’ were revealed to inflame and misinform the public.”

No witnesses until May

“Restricting the publication of evidence at a trial is the sharp edge of a slippery slope,” the factum states, “which … results in ‘Star Chamber’ or military commission [-style] trials where the public’s right to know is supplanted by the government desire to withhold.”

The document says the defendant would suffer unduly from a publication ban because he wouldn’t be disassociated from some of the worst allegations being made in the case.

In all, 18 suspects were originally charged with offences related to supporting terrorism, but three have had charges against them stayed.

None of the evidence detailed in the Crown review has been tested in court.

Although the trial officially began Tuesday, the first witnesses are not expected to be called until May 27.

Related: Toronto 18

March 26th, 2008 News | no comments | Email it! |  Print This Post | 130 views