The defendant is accused of helping to plan what he is said to have called the Battle of Toronto, a foiled terror attack aimed at destroying Canada's premier stock exchange and crippling the city. But the actual trial of Shareef Abdelhaleem – the first adult to be tried in the so-called Toronto 18 case – seems curiously anticlimactic.Four years ago, when he and 17 other Canadian males were first arraigned, the Brampton courthouse was frenzied. Reporters jostled one another under the watchful eyes of heavily armed police. Television cameras were everywhere. Helicopters whirred overhead. But on day three of the 34-year-old Mississauga man's trial, there are no machine guns, no helicopters and only a handful of print reporters.
"Entrapment," one courthouse regular confides to me during the lunch break. "He'll have to argue entrapment. That's his only hope. Even then it might not work." Indeed, on the face of it, it seems that the computer programmer's only possible defence is that he was somehow enmeshed in the bomb plot by Shaher Elsohamy, a former friend turned RCMP informant.
That there was such a plot is now beyond question. Three of the 18, including mastermind Zakaria Amara, have pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired to blow up buildings as part of a protest against Canada's involvement in the Afghan war.
What's going on now is a trial to determine if Abdelhaleem – the only other member of the 18 charged in the bomb plot – was also involved. And one of the key questions that this court will have to answer is whether RCMP informant Elsohamy overstepped legal bounds when, in order to get information for his paymasters, he pretended to be a co-conspirator.
Certainly, the RCMP mole's evidence to date doesn't bode well for the accused. Elsohamy has testified that Abdelhaleem, whom he said was initially a vigorous opponent of staging terrorist attacks in Canada, changed his mind in April 2006 after open heart surgery. He's also testified that the defendant hoped to make big profits from bombing the Toronto stock exchange.
The mole's conversations with the accused, portions of which were recorded by the RCMP, paint a picture of someone who, while torn by doubt over the morality of killing innocents, finally determined that this was the right thing to do. As described by Elsohamy, the defendant is at times paranoid (at one point he suggests that mastermind Amara is an agent for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service), at times full of himself and at times resigned to capture.
In one conversation, according to the informant, Abdelhaleem talks of following the Toronto attack with similar bombings in Chicago and New York. He muses about becoming renowned among world terrorists as the leader of Al Qaeda's Canadian division. In another, he talks of how he would use his time in prison to radicalize black Muslims who, he believed, filled Canadian jails. Yet throughout the trial, which continues next week, runs the nagging question of how much was serious, how much was just talk and how much was induced by the actions of the RCMP mole.
Certainly, the informer can't be blamed for everything. Plot leader Amara has already admitted that, by the time the RCMP mole became involved, bomb plans were in motion. Amara had even built a working detonator. But Elsohamy's own testimony shows he was crucial in two key areas: obtaining ammonium nitrate "fertilizer" for use in bomb-making (in fact, it was not real fertilizer but a harmless substance supplied by police); and securing a place where these materials could be stored.
One of the questions the judge deciding this case will presumably have to ponder is how far the plot would have progressed had the RCMP, through Elsohamy, not been involved. Would the plotters, who in most of the intercepted RCMP conversations reveal themselves to be amazingly inept, have been able to find another source of explosives? Or would some of them have abandoned the scheme.
Behind this is the question of the informant's motive. Court heard that Elsohamy's friendship with Abdelhaleem was badly strained after a joint 2005 vacation in Morocco before, apparently, being repaired. A few months after he returned from that Morocco trip, Elsohamy was persuaded by CSIS to spy on his friend in return for, he testified, no remuneration except expenses.
But in April 2006 he entered into negotiations with the RCMP to become their paid agent. Asked Monday how much in total he received from the Mounties, Elsohamy said he couldn't recall (as the Star has reported, it was $4.1 million). He testified that he owed about $20,000 to family and friends at the time. But, he has said, he informed not for financial but moral reasons.
Defence lawyer William Naylor is to continue cross-examining Elsohamy next week. As the trial continues, we may find out more about the role of the police and security agencies in this seminal, but now very low-key, Canadian terror case.