Man Pleads Guilty in Plot to Bomb Sites in Toronto - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA — A man unexpectedly pleaded guilty on Thursday to leading a plot to blow up at least three prominent sites, including the Toronto Stock Exchange, in a bid to create chaos to force Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.

The defendant, Zakaria Amara, who was 20 and working at a gas station at the time of his arrest in 2006, is the fifth member of a group known as the Toronto 18 to be convicted or plead guilty in the case. But prosecutors said the others were peripheral players who did not have full knowledge of Mr. Amara’s plan to damage the stock exchange, the Toronto office of Canada’s intelligence service and a military base.

But evidently the authorities were much better informed about the plot than were some of Mr. Amara’s co-conspirators. An agreed statement of facts presented to a court in Brampton, Ontario, on Thursday showed that the group had been infiltrated by two police informants and that its actions were under intense surveillance by police and intelligence agencies.

As the authorities watched and listened in, Mr. Amara organized training camps that featured extremist Islamic teachings and somewhat inept military-style exercises. Among other things, members of the group considered raiding Canada’s Parliament buildings and beheading Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as well as conducting raids on nuclear power stations.

Mr. Amara and most of the others were arrested in June 2006 after receiving what he believed to be three metric tons of fertilizer for making bombs. He had unknowingly placed the order through a police informant, and what he received was an inert powder.

By pleading guilty to two terrorism charges, Mr. Amara faces up to life in prison. Two other members of the group have entered guilty pleas in recent weeks.

Mr. Amara grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, a Toronto suburb, and as a teenager he began exchanging e-mail messages with Muslims around the world who promoted violent and radical forms of Islam. He started what became the Toronto 18 with another man who still awaits trial and whose identity remains protected by a court order, according to the statement of facts that was read in court on Thursday.

But Mr. Amara eventually split from his partner to form a cell to develop and carry out a bomb plot that he hoped would cause widespread destruction.

Evidence from the court case indicates that Mr. Amara had been known to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service since he was 16. Alarmed by what they found in 2005, police and intelligence agents hired two informants to infiltrate the group. The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, reported last month that the agent who arranged the ersatz fertilizer shipment, Shaher Elsohemy, was paid about $3.8 million by the government.

According to the statement, Mr. Amara planned to pack three rental trucks with ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It appeared that the bombs were to be detonated on Sept. 11, 2006, in what another conspirator called “The Battle of Toronto.” One of the targets, the Toronto office of the intelligence agency, is near the CN Tower, a major tourist attraction, as well as the stadium that is home to the Toronto Blue Jays. An explosion was also intended at an unidentified military base in Ontario.

About a month before Mr. Amara’s arrest, the police surreptitiously searched his house, where they found a bomb-making manual and a shopping list of bomb ingredients, according to the statement. Mr. Amara had had business cards created with the phrase “student farmers.”

Six defendants still await trial. Charges have been suspended or dropped against seven other people.