Ottawa Citizen

Accused plotter just a con man, lawyer says

- CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD Toronto

Despite his client’s caught-on-wiretap jihadist hate-mongering, the lawyer for accused terrorist Raed Jaser has urged a jury to look past how Jaser sounded and appeared and “see him for what he really is:” a mere con man.

John Norris was delivering his closing address to Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael Code and the jurors in the terrorism trial of Jaser and his co-accused, Chiheb Esseghaier, on Thursday.

Both men are pleading not guilty to terrorism-related charges in connection with a 2012 plot to derail a passenger train — one originatin­g in New York and headed for Toronto — by cutting or blowing a hole on a bridge.

They got so far as to scout out several prospectiv­e locations in St. Catharines, Ont., nearby Jordan Harbour, and the Highland Creek bridge in Scarboroug­h.

Norris began by acknowledg­ing that what the jurors heard Jaser say in conversati­ons secretly recorded by an undercover FBI agent — such things as “We want this whole city, this country, to burn” and “everyone’s a target — especially Jews” — was appalling.

But, Norris argued, Jaser wasn’t “sincere about anything he said, or at least there’s a reasonable doubt about his sincerity. ... Even if, on some emotional level, you feel he doesn’t deserve the benefit of that doubt because of all the hateful things he said,” Jaser is entitled to it.

The lawyer’s theory, supported to some degree by some of what is on about 25 hours of wiretapped intercepts the jurors have heard, is that Jaser was feigning his jihadist leanings with both Esseghaier and the undercover agent because he was trying to squeeze them for money.

Certainly, the intercepts reveal Jaser as a grasping fellow who certainly seemed to see the agent, whose cover was that he was a wealthy American Muslim who was happy to finance terrorism, as a resource to be milked.

He asked the agent for money for an unnamed Muslim sister who needed help, for a video camera for the train project and ultimately tried to convince him that his half-cocked plan to open up a restaurant-cum-halal butcher store would provide reliable ongoing financing for a reign of terror. It was after the two men made a second reconnaiss­ance trip to the Scarboroug­h location that they were spotted by Toronto Police, who briefly questioned them.

That led to Jaser dropping out of the train plot — because, prosecutor Croft Michaelson says, he was spooked and afraid of being caught, or because, according to Norris, the agent had pooh-poohed his weird business proposal.

Uncharacte­ristically, Jaser even returned the $1,000 the agent had given him for the video camera, and that, Michaelson told the jurors this week in his closing remarks, shows the notion of him as a con man is absurd.

“It was never about money for Mr. Jaser,” Michaelson said at one point. “Mr. Jaser constantly talks about religion. You know from his own words what he wants: victory over disbelieve­rs or death and entry into paradise.”

Norris cheerfully portrayed Esseghaier as a hapless, Inspector Clouseau type of terrorist — sincere, but bumbling.

Esseghaier had made two trips to Iran in 2011 and 2012, where he claims to have met “brothers” from the Taliban and al-Qaida who urged him to return to Canada and wait for instructio­ns.

“The brothers overseas,” Norris scoffed, saw jihad “as a way to relieve him (Esseghaier) of his finances.

“Mr. Esseghaier’s dealings with the brothers point to his gullibilit­y,” he told the jurors. “You must banish any thought that Mr. Jaser must be the real deal because Mr. Esseghaier thought so.”

From his bank records, an exhibit at trial, it’s clear that before each extended trip to Iran, Esseghaier cleared out his bank accounts — and that though he was of modest means, he was a good saver.

But the jurors have no evidence he just handed funds over to the men he met there.

As Michaelson said, all in all, Esseghaier — a poor PhD student, with no car — was a lousy candidate for fraud or a con.

Norris, though, told the jurors the two men never had a true “meeting of the minds” on either the specific train plot or a general conspiracy to murder. Jaser’s “terrorist spots,” he said, came and went as his opportunit­y to wheedle some money out of Esseghaier, and later, the agent, came and went.

Jaser knew, Norris said, “the train plot wasn’t going anywhere and never would.”

As for Jaser’s own beloved project — the killing of prominent Jews, for whom he reserved a special loathing, by a sniper — Norris said it was “chilling, but no closer to fruition than any of the others.”

Justice Code will start his instructio­ns to jurors Friday.

 ??  JOHN MANTHA/CANADIAN PRESS FILE ?? Raed Jaser is accused of plotting to derail a passenger train. His defence attorney says he was simply trying to squeeze money from a co-accused and an undercover FBI agent.
 JOHN MANTHA/CANADIAN PRESS FILE Raed Jaser is accused of plotting to derail a passenger train. His defence attorney says he was simply trying to squeeze money from a co-accused and an undercover FBI agent.
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