ISIL FORCED TORONTO 18 TERROR PLOT LEADER TO RETHINK HIS IDEOLOGY
From the prison where Zakaria Amara endures his life sentence, the leader of a terrorist plot to explode huge truck bombs in Ontario said the atrocities of ISIL jihadists drove him to re-evaluate and reject his radical beliefs, making him ready for release from prison.
Amara’s appeals of a personal transformation over 15 years behind bars, however, were not enough to warrant his release, the Parole Board of Canada told him after a lengthy and sometimes emotional hearing Friday.
Amara, 35, began and ended his parole hearing in tears.
At the start, he said he was nervous of this “big moment,” his opportunity, and then started wiping away tears and sobbing.
Near the end, in his final appeal to the board before members began deliberations, he pressed his crossed hands against his chest and spoke in gasps between tears, as he thanked those who supported him in prison, including his sister, as well as his daughter who was just nine months old when he was arrested.
In between was a riveting account over three hours of his transformation from young jihadist seeking revenge on Canada for its involvement in the war in Afghanistan to a man trying to reclaim a place in Canadian society.
Amara was one of 18 people arrested in a shocking anti-terrorism probe in 2006 against linked alqaida-inspired plots in Toronto and Ottawa. It became known as the Toronto 18 case, although charges against some were dropped before trial.
“When it came to the targets, the thinking was that one of them was economic and one of them was security and the other one was military,” Amara said of their plot to detonate three heavy duty bombs hidden in trucks, one of which he considered driving to its target in a suicide attack, he said.
At the time of his plotting, he said, he praised Osama bin Laden “in my heart,” a feeling he maintained in prison where he kept in contact with members of the Khadr family, who became notorious in Canada for their association with bin Laden.
Amara maintains a youthful look. With a short beard and his black hair cut medium-short, Amara wore a white T-shirt and dark pants for his hearing at Warkworth Institution, a medium-security prison in Ontario.
“I was aware that people were going to be hurt but it seemed at the time that I was so focused on the symbolism of the act,” he said of his crimes that put him in prison.
“Because I’m not a violent person it is easier to think of a bomb where you don’t see the victims versus a close-up attack where you do physically have an intimate or a close contact with the victims.
“At some point I contemplated, unfortunately, adding shrapnel to increase the casualty rate. So, that’s disgusting.”
He said the ambition of his plot overwhelmed him.
“The plan to construct three truck bombs was a little bit too complicated,” he said. “Near the end, the technical issues became too much.”
Regardless, he was determined to press ahead with some type of attack.
“Every time there was an obstacle, I kept doubling down and I kept going forward,” he said. “I did have the intent. I would have tried something.”
The only thing that stopped him, he said, was arrest.
“I look at prison as a blessing and, in a way, I see the life sentence as a blessing too, because going to prison was the best of all possible outcomes, given how radicalized I was at the time and how determined I was to go through with it.
“Prison was very good for me because it was the only way I could be saved.”
After his conviction in 2010, Amara was placed in the Special Handling Unit (SHU) in Quebec, Canada’s highest security prison, where he only mingled with other Islamist extremists. He said his views at first hardened in prison.
“A lot of things have changed,” he said.
The violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIL or ISIS, seized his attention as it did everyone else, in 2014 when it began seizing territory in Iraq. Their actions forced him to re-evaluate his ideology, he said.
ISIL “came on the scene and were doing all kinds of horrific things,” he said, and he “couldn’t stomach it.” It forced him to realize there was something wrong with his world view.
Ever since, he said he has been mentally and intellectually “building a new house” for himself.
Now, he says, he has cut ties with radicals, saying he can no longer stand being around them and they are like “apples and oranges.”
Prior to the hearing, Amara sent the board an immense letter — running 102 pages — outlining his thoughts and experiences.
Since leaving the SHU, his behaviour was described as “largely positive,” other than participation in a mass demonstration by 64 inmates who refused to stand for an attendance count.
Amara planned to stay at a halfway house in downtown Toronto, if granted parole, undergo a deradicalization program, and complete post-secondary schooling with a goal of becoming a social worker.
Part of his problem in obtaining parole is that despite the length of time he had been behind bars, and an influx in additional inmates also facing sentences for terrorism, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) offers no deradicalization or counselling programs to help extremists, the parole board told him.
Shannon Wilson, his institutional parole officer, told the board that Amara was not referred to in-custody programming, unlike other violent offenders, because of the unusual nature of terrorist crimes.
Instead, Amara had sporadic and informal conversations with imams, conversations with institutional parole officers, read extensively, and spoke with “reputable members of the community,” Wilson said.
Parole board members Michael Sanford and Alison Scott complained that CSC had not arranged programming suitable for radicalized inmates despite years of prosecuting terrorists.
In denying Amara parole after an hour’s deliberation, Scott said it wasn’t all his fault, but CSC’S for not allowing the board to properly assess how much progress Amara really had made because of a lack of objective programming.
“We can see the change,” she told Amara. However, they felt the risk to public safety was still present and the risk was unmanageable without further intervention.