NAKED GREED UNDER A SHEEN OF RELIGIOSITY
Whatever the FBI agent who is the key witness at the trial of two alleged Via train terrorists is paid, it is not enough.
What that poor man, who Wednesday completed his 12 days of testimony before Ontario Superior Court Judge Michael Code and a jury, has suffered nearly defies description.
When he finally escaped the downtown Toronto courtroom, it must have felt akin to removing needles from his eyes.
The glamour of TV dramas about undercover agents and the FBI be damned.
For almost a year, the agent had to endure tortured chats — in person and over the phone, in cars and homes and hotel rooms and mosques, all surreptitiously recorded — with Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser, the accused terrorists.
Both are pleading not guilty to five terror-related charges apiece, but the jurors have heard enough already to convict them of conversational crimes against humanity and gross inanity.
Every time the agent spoke with one or both or with any of their hangers-on who percolated in and out, there were endless ritualistic prayers and God-fearing exhortations to endure, long minutes of them, several times per chat.
“So may God bless you,” Jaser, as a typical intercept played for the jurors illustrates, would say, usually in Arabic. “God bless,” a hanger-on would add. “May Allah reward you,” Jaser would add. “God willing no problem,” the third fellow would say. “God willing,” the agent would chirp in. “Thank God,” one of the others would add. “Thank God,” Jaser would say brightly. “Thank God,” the agent would echo.
Invariably too, there would be a round of six of peace-be-upon-you’s in every chat.
“Peace be upon you, God’s mercy and his blessings,” the agent might say, kicking things off.
“Peace be upon you too,” the third fellow would add. “Peace,” Jaser would add. “Peace be with you, thank you,” the agent would add.
“May God bless you, my brother,” Jaser might throw in.
“Thank you brother,” from the agent.
“Talk to you soon, God willing:” Over to Jaser.
“Take care brother,” from the agent.
“Peace upon you, God’s mercy,” from Jaser.
Bear in mind, Jaser and Esseghaier were, allegedly, also discussing the various ways they might wreak death and destruction upon unsuspecting Canadians and Americans; the agent was posing as their purported benefactor and supporter, a rich American Muslim who was presumably swept away by the brilliance of the duo’s jihadist visions.
It is a miracle, and a testament to the powers of self-delusion, that either Esseghaier (he’s the long-haired, heavy-bearded, wild-eyed fellow who is unrepresented in court and often drops off and snoozes, and once had to be wakened Wednesday by an officer so the judge could ask if he had any questions) or Jaser (he’s the one in a dark suit and glasses who sits immobile and ramrod straight, as though impaled upon a hot poker) could ever have imagined that an ostensibly wealthy and certainly well-spoken fellow like the agent would ever have found them interesting company, let alone worthy coconspirators.
But they did indeed believe he was smitten with them.
Though in the final analysis, they are accused of plotting to derail a Via passenger train over a bridge — this was the alleged plan — Esseghaier also considered and abandoned other, even crazier ideas, such as somehow detonating a dormant volcano in Yellowstone National Park or hiring a chef to poison the grub at a Canadian military base. Jaser, meantime, leaned more toward the conventional, such as random Jew-killing, via a hired sniper.
Jaser, in fact, was sufficiently emboldened by the agent’s seeming embrace of him that he
The jurors have heard enough already to convict them of conversational crimes against humanity and gross inanity.
immediately began pitching all manner of scams, from supporting an anonymous Muslim sister who needed money to pay for an apartment to helping out an unnamed “brother” who owed the Canadian government money and could use a hand up to propose a creditor’s settlement to an ambitious scheme for a three-in-one halal butcher shop-cum restaurant-cum store in a Toronto strip mall.
All would require, of course, a significant cash infusion from the generous agent.
He was not fooled for a minute by the sheen of religiosity with which Jaser coated his naked greed; the agent always suspected he was being played and once wrote in his notes that Jaser had pulled one plan “right out of his ass.”
And besides, for all that Jaser seemed to have what the court artist Marianne Boucher describes as difficulty distinguishing the Prophet from profit, there was some method to his entrepreneurial imaginings, particularly the three-in-one business.
“He wanted a self-sustaining business to support all future acts (of terrorism),” is how the agent put it. Jaser, he said, wanted to usher in “a new age of terror in the Western world.”
In the end, the two men were arrested in April 2013.
As for the agent, who can’t be identified, he has perhaps seen and heard the last of Esseghaier and Jaser, inshallah, peace be upon him, etc., etc. The jurors are not yet so lucky.