TERROR PLANS KEPT SHIFTING, COURT TOLD
Pair of alleged conspirators considered a variety of targets, FBI agent testifies
John Norris isn’t done yet with his cross- examination of the undercover FBI agent who is the key witness in the trial of two men accused of terrorism charges in the alleged plot to attack a Via passenger train.
Thus it may be too soon to say what is the end game of Norris, who represents accused plotter Raed Jaser.
But part of his defence, it appears, is that Jaser and his co- accused, Chiheb Esseghaier, were a pair of schmoes who were all over the map with their terrorist plans, too inept and full of baloney to pose a real danger, and further, that his guy at least, Jaser, wasn’t serious anyway and was just trying to put the arm on the purportedly rich agent for money.
In fact, during one lengthy conversation between Jaser and the agent, part of which was played for Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael Code and the jury in a Toronto courtroom Tuesday, Jaser appeared to treat the agent as an ATM, now outright asking him to support a Muslim woman who was allegedly in need of an apartment, now suggesting that another friend of his who routinely gave most of his money away to charity might also be a worthy recipient of largesse.
The two men are pleading not guilty.
The FBI agent came equipped with a “legend,” a cover story that had him posing as a wealthy American Muslim businessman who was supportive of jihad. He first approached Esseghaier, a Montreal PhD student who later introduced him to Jaser, who lived in Toronto and worked in the taxi industry.
All this unfolded in the summer and fall of 2012, with the two men arrested in April 2013 after a lengthy cross- border investigation.
There’s little question the men had different ideas.
Esseghaier claimed to be operating on the loose instructions of a man he met in Iran, whom he believed had links to al- Qaida and even to Osama bin Laden and whom he called in his flowery way “The Responsible One.” It was this man, Esseghaier told the agent, who first suggested he bring down a railway bridge or poison the food at a Canadian military base.
But Esseghaier was toying with an idea of his own — somehow blowing up Yellowstone National Park in the United States by making a dormant volcano explode.
He told the agent about it shortly after they first met, and initially, the agent said, was passionate about it.
But then, as the agent added wryly, Esseghaier is “passionate about everything.”
He soon abandoned the idea as too difficult, the agent said, and the poisoning plan went the same way — “It had some problems,” as the agent said, particularly when the only cook Esseghaier knew stopped taking his calls.
He soon focused again on the plan to derail the New Yorkto- Toronto passenger train by cutting a five- or six- metre hole in the tracks over a Scarborough, Ont., bridge.
He talked excitedly about the number of casualties several times, the agent said, conversations he told Norris he found very troubling.
But after the three were spotted by police while on a reconnaissance mission to scout out the bridge, Jaser soon decided he wanted nothing to do with the train plot, and never spoke to the agent again.
But he too had a plan up his sleeve, court has heard — he thought it made more sense to concentrate on more prominent targets, such as wealthy and prominent Jews, by finding a sniper who could pick off people at the city ’s annual Gay Pride parade.
So the two certainly had their differences over which alleged plot was better, and their styles were different too, with Esseghaier the more rash and florid personality, Jaser more subdued — just, in fact, as they appear in court.
And even the alleged train plot was flawed; as it turned out, the bridge the trio scouted and planned to use was east of the city, and the New York train
Esseghaier was toying with an idea of his own — somehow blowing up Yellowstone National Park ... by making a dormant volcano explode.
approaches the city from the west and would never have crossed it in any case.
But does any of that mean Esseghaier and Jaser weren’t to be taken seriously, and weren’t actively conspiring ?
I was reminded of what Ontario Superior Court Justice John Sproat, who presided over some of the trials of the Toronto 18 terror case in Brampton a few years ago, once said in a pre- trial ruling.
“Put differently,” he wrote in that instance, “the charge is participation in terrorist activities, not participation in terrorist activities on an epic scale.”
History, Judge Sproat also said, is “replete with examples of how dangerous even a lone gunman, particularly with a misguided sense of mission or importance, can be.”