It is just another example that proves the Canadian justice system is weak on terrorism.
In a courtroom on Monday in Brampton, a satellite city of Toronto, a judge sentenced one of the ringleaders of the Toronto 18 terrorist group, Fahim Ahmad, 26, to 16 years in prison for plotting a series of bombings and armed attacks that would have killed hundreds of Canadians. The planned devastation resulting from Canada’s biggest ever terrorist plot was only averted by the group’s arrest in 2006. What has angered Canadians, though, is that while the 16-year sentence looks impressive, Ahmad will, disgracefully, only serve about three and a half years before being eligible for parole for his three terrorism-related convictions.
“Perhaps his emergence from youth has caused his fervour to soften,” said Justice Fletcher Dawson at Ahmad’s sentencing. “One thing is clear: I am not dealing with someone who remains openly defiant and who blatantly continues to advocate the rightfulness of his past ideas and actions.”
For the sake of Canadians’ security, one hopes Fletcher is right and the flames of Ahmad’s murderous fanaticism will have subsided by 2014. The married father of two had planned to kill his fellow Canadians with a cold brutality that would have matched the London and Madrid commuter train bombings. If Ahmad’s proffered reasons for his becoming a terrorist, including absent parents, bad religious leaders and “people he met online”, were only a courtroom charade, then he will soon be free to plot again.
Toronto’s iconic CN Tower, the Toronto Stock Exchange, a military base and a building housing the Canadian intelligence service were among the targets Ahmad had selected to destroy with truck bombs that would have caused innumerable casualties. Not satisfied with creating these infernos, the group Ahmad recruited also intended to storm Canada’s federal parliament in Ottawa and behead the prime minister and hold other politicians hostage until Canada withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. In preparation for the slaughter, Ahmad also ran two training camps in isolated areas of Ontario.
This was not the first time a member of the Toronto 18 (charges were eventually dropped against seven members) had received what critics regard as an overly light sentence. Last year, Canadians were disgusted when they learned that Saeed Khalid, sentenced to 14 years, would only serve two years and four months before becoming eligible for parole.
Another Toronto 18 member, Ali Mohamad Dirie, a Somali who Canada had welcomed as a refugee from a failed, war-torn country, also only needed to serve a year of his seven-year sentence for smuggling guns for the group from the United States before he would get his chance at freedom via parole. According to one report, he will be released “no later than 2011.” It was Dirie, perhaps the group’s most venom-filled member, who called white people the “Number one filthiest people on the face of the planet.
“They don’t have Islam,” he said. “They’re the most filthiest people. In Islam there is no racism, we only hate kafir (non-believers).”
But the prize for the shortest jail time in the Toronto 18 case was won by Amin Mohamad Durani, 23, who only had to serve one day in jail after leaving the courtroom last January. The prosecutor said Durrani had supervised training at one of the group’s camps. He also had helped select a safe house in a small town where the would-be terrorists discussed whether to kill the neighbors to prevent their training from being reported to the police. But such savagery wasn’t enough to convince the judge to add any substantial time to the three years, seven months and eighteen days Durrani had served in pre-trial custody – except for that one extra day.
Part of the problem with the Canadian justice system that contributes to substantially shortened prison time is that time served in pre-trial custody counts as double, which is then subtracted from the criminal’s eventual sentence. That is why the judge in the Durrani case only added one day. He felt Durrani’s three years and seven months of pre-custody time equalled the seven and a half years he gave Durrani at the sentencing hearing. The other Toronto 18 members also became eligible for parole so early after being sentenced for the same reason.
Unfortunately, the minority, law-and-order Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has its hands tied on this matter. Its stated goal is to change the double credit sentencing law, but it has been unsuccessful so far. The two opposition parties, the Liberals and the socialist New Democratic Party, have opposed the government’s efforts, but if the next Canadian federal election, expected next spring, returns a majority Conservative government, then the corrective legislation is sure to pass.
The other problem, according to Richard Fadden, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Canada’s CIA), is that Canadians have a “serious blind spot as a country” to the threat terrorism poses. This was evident in the Ahmad case where the youth of the defendant, and of the other Toronto 18 members as well, was taken into account in sentencing. A person’s youth and prospects for rehabilitation, while normally taken into consideration in other cases, should not be a factor when a serious terrorism case comes before the court.
In an interview with a Canadian newspaper last year, Fadden blames a …“ loose partnership” of “non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups and lawyers” for this blind spot. Sometimes called the “Legal Left”, Fadden accuses them of portraying any attempt by the government to fight terrorism as “an overreaction or an assault on liberty.
“Many of our opinion leaders have come to see the fight against terrorism not as defending democracy and our values, but as attacking them,” he said.
Such an attitude to fighting terrorism is no doubt reflected in the lenient punishments meted out by Canadian courts to its perpetrators.
With such soft sentencing, Canada is obviously sending out a weak and wrong message about how it regards terrorism. Instead of a stern warning through harsh penalties to those who plan to commit terrorist acts, the Canadian justice system is demonstrating it will be lenient, even to those with the temperament of wild beasts who would attempt to destroy, or at least change, Canadian society forever through unspeakable acts of violence. For such people, there should be no room for mercy. And with such an inviting legal environment for terrorists, Canadians should be concerned that one day Osama bin Laden may decide to take advantage of it.
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