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| Great White North |
| Guns, ammo, electronic gear found at terror suspectÂ’s home |
| 2008-07-08 |
| Police found three rifles, 640 rounds of ammunition and an array of digital electronic components when they raided the family home of Momin Khawaja in March 2004, the Ottawa man’s terrorism trial has been told. They also found a pellet gun and a much-perforated paper target mounted with duct tape to a pock-marked concrete wall in the basement of the house owned by Khawaja’s parents, RCMP Cpl. Taro Tan testified Monday. In addition, the Mounties carried off more than a dozen books on religion, politics and military tactics, among them treatises entitled The Religious and Moral Doctrine of Jihad, Decisive Battles of Islam, and Defence of the Muslim Land. Investigators seized banking and financial records, passports and other travel documents, two desktop computers, a laptop and four hard drives from the house. They went on to seize another two computers from Khawaja’s work station at the Foreign Affairs Department, where he was employed on contract as a software designer. Defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon adamantly insisted none of the evidence proved his client was part of an alleged plot by Islamic extremists to attack targets in Britain. Among the firearms seized by the RCMP were two high-powered, 7.6-mm weapons, including one Russian-designed rifle that was equipped with a folding bayonet. But all the guns were properly registered and Khawaja had a licence to own them, Greenspon noted in court. He reiterated the point, with added emphasis, in comments to reporters after the day’s testimony was over. "I don’t think that it assists the Crown’s case in any way," he said of the weapons seizure. "It shows somebody who was in possession legally of firearms and ammunition and had been involved in shooting and target practice." Greenspon also noted, during his cross-examination of Tan, that many of the electronic components seized by the Mounties were discovered in the bedroom of Khawaja’s older brother Qasim — along with $10,000 in cash tucked under Qasim’s mattress. In a wiretapped phone conversation recorded three days earlier, the two brothers had discussed plans to withdraw a large amount of money from their bank accounts and convert it to cash. "After a few days," warned Qasim, "they might freeze your account. They did it to me." "They won’t do it, trust me," Momin replied. Greenspon chose his words carefully when asked by journalists whether he thought that Qasim — who faces no criminal accusations and is not on trial — may nevertheless have played a role in the alleged plot. "You’d have to ask that to the Crown," said the defence lawyer. "Qasim has not been charged. You get some idea of the contents of his bedroom from the evidence today, but I don’ know that anything more can be drawn from it than that." Momin Khawaja faces seven criminal counts, including charges of financing terrorism, helping to facilitate a terrorist enterprise and making a house owned by his family in Pakistan available as a terrorist base. |
| Posted by:ryuge |