ROOFTOP snipers, scores of police and concrete barriers protected a downtown Ottawa courthouse today, as the trial got underway for the first defendant charged under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act. Mohammed Momin Khawaja, 29, faces seven criminal charges of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts in Britain, including developing bomb detonators, possession of explosives, financing terrorism, and training as a terrorist.The Ottawa software developer of Pakistani descent was arrested in March 2004, in connection with a foiled bomb plot against several British targets, including a popular London nightclub, a shopping mall and a gas network.
Today, he pleaded not guilty to the charges.
'Given the nature of the charges Mr Khawaja is facing, we thought it would be prudent to boost security,' Ottawa police inspector Joan McKenna said.
The prosecution is considered a key test of Canada's anti-terrorism legislation, which was tweaked last year after a judge threw out a portion of it that defined terrorism. The judge had found the new act unconstitutional because it attempted to define terrorism by what motivated it, and so wrongly attempted to police people's thoughts, religious beliefs or opinions.
Even so, the prosecution was allowed to proceed while the government amended the bill that was originally rushed through parliament in late 2001, following the September 11 attacks in the US.
'We passed a law in record time in response to 9/11, and Momin was the first person charged in Canada under that law,' said Khawaja's lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who spent much of the past four years arguing for the government to grant the defence access to secret intelligence documents in the case. 'Just about everything we've done to this point has been for the first time,' he said.
Inside the courthouse, heavily-armed police herded officials, journalists and others through metal detectors and a maze of metal-fenced aisles to the courtroom. There, Khawaja sat quietly behind bullet-proof glass as the court listened to the charges read by the prosecutor, describing him as a key player in the foiled British bomb plot.
The devout Muslim was born in Canada of Pakistani immigrant parents and once worked as a computer expert at Canada's Foreign Affairs Department.
The prosecution alleged he sought out the fanatic group of British Muslims, also of Pakistani descent, and designed for them a remote detonator to set off a fertilizer bomb. The detonator was found in Khawaja's Ottawa house along with an arsenal of guns during a police raid in 2004, the court heard.
The prosecution also laid out emails, and descriptions of video and wiretap surveillance that purportedly tie him to the bomb plot. In one email sent from a Foreign Affairs computer, according to prosecutors, Khawaja was said to have discussed using a courier to send the detonator to his contacts in London.
Five of Khawaja's alleged abettors were convicted in the case and given lengthy prison terms in April 2007 in Britain. Two others were acquitted.
Khawaja's lawyers have disputed any link between Khawaja and the arrests in Britain.
Later today, a man being held in the US who testified at the British trial of his alleged co-conspirators is expected to appear as a prosecution witness against Khawaja.
If convicted, Khawaja faces possible life in prison.