DERAILMENT PLOT
Accused abandoned plot in 2012 after run-in with police, court hears.
One of the two men accused of planning a terror attack on an Ontario train abandoned the plot in 2012 after a chance run-in with the police, court heard Monday.
Raed Jaser told his alleged co-conspirator Chiheb Esseghaier to “get someone else,” after the two men were questioned by police.
“I cannot help you. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you,” he said in a recording made by an undercover FBI agent. “But you can get somebody else. For me, personally, it’s no good.”
Mr. Jaser and Mr. Esseghaier are on trial for allegedly planning to derail a passenger train at the behest of foreign jihadis. Both men face a host of terrorism-related charges in the plot; not guilty pleas have been entered for both.
On Sept. 24, 2012, the two men explored a railway bridge in Scarborough alongside the undercover agent, who was posing as a wealthy Muslim-American businessman.
The three men had finished walking across the bridge, allegedly debating the best way to bring it down, and were sitting in the agent’s rental car when the police found them.
“At first we thought they were just passing by,” the agent testified Tuesday. “They circled around and parked behind us.”
It turned out the conductor in a passing train had seen the men on the tracks and contacted the police. As a group of officers approached the car, Mr. Jaser hid a camera and a list of things he was supposed to do to move the plot forward beneath his jacket, the agent said.
Eventually, the three men were able to convince the police they just got lost sightseeing. The officers took their personal information and drove away.
But afterward, in the car, Mr. Jaser exploded at his alleged coconspirators. “You guys are stupid,” he said. “You don’t listen, sorry. I’m very upset with you.”
Mr. Jaser said the Scarborough location was now spoiled. He then seemed to turn on the plot altogether.
He told the other men, as he had in earlier recordings played in court, that the train plan seemed impractical, given the facts on the ground. “If you wanna do this, fine, we can do it, but we’re gonna do it our way, not their way,” he said, a reference to the Iranian-based “brothers” who were allegedly instructing Mr. Esseghaier. “We’re in Canada, we’re not in Kandahar.”
Mr. Jaser said it might make sense to focus on more prominent targets. After 20 years in Canada, he told Mr. Esseghaier, he understood “how to hurt these people the most.”
“These people, they only understand the language of two things: death and money,” he said.
As he had in earlier recordings, Mr. Jaser said the men should find a sniper to target wealthy and prominent Jews. “The richest Jews [on] the whole planet, they live in Toronto,” he said. “They live on one street ... they all live within the vicinity of each other.”
For several minutes in the recording, the two men squabbled loudly as the agent tried to calm them down.
“Stop being so dramatic,” Mr. Jaser said at one point. “Dramatic doesn’t do anything for Islam.”
Later that same day, the three men met up again in the agent’s rental car. There, Mr. Jaser announced that he was done with the plot entirely. He told Mr. Esseghaier he was too “rash” and “aggressive.”
“I cannot work with you,” he said.
“We will go search for another believer,” Mr. Esseghaier eventually replied, before boarding a bus back to Montreal, where he was enrolled in a PhD program. “We don’t want people who [are] scared.”
After Mr. Esseghaier left, the agent and Mr. Jaser spoke again. In the transcript, Mr. Jaser appears to make it clear that while he’s done with the train plan, he has not given up on the idea of another attack.
“We’re gonna have our own operations,” he said, according to the transcript. “We don’t have to wait for you or wait for brother Chiheb or wait for orders from overseas.”
The undercover FBI agent testified Tuesday for a seventh day. The trial, which resumes Wednesday, is expected to last between six and eight weeks.