A life sentence has been handed out in Canada to Zakaria Amara for a thankfully unsuccessful terrorist plot.
He planned to detonate three one-tonne truck bombs, made with ammonium nitrate, outside the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Front St. offices of Canada’s spy agency and a military base off Highway 401. To maximize casualties, he wanted to place metal chips in the bombs and detonate them at 9 a.m., when the downtown would be bustling.
“There can be no legitimate suggestion that this was not the real thing,” said Durno. “This was not a group of amateurs whose efforts were inevitably doomed to failure.”
Amara was among 18 people charged in the summer of 2006 after a complex investigation that involved numerous police and intelligence agencies, both domestic and international.
In October, he pleaded guilty to participating in the activity of a terrorist group and intending to cause an explosion that was likely to cause serious harm or death.
Amara was one of the leaders at a December 2005 training camp in Washago, Ont., where recruits listened to jihadi speeches and took up firearms training with a gun that he supplied. He had photos and maps of Parliament with him and sought approval or support from the Mujahideen overseas.
In the spring of 2006, he meticulously planned a deadly plot, hoping it would prompt Canadian military forces to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Sadly, a successful terrorist plot wasn’t necessary for the Canadians to run out of Afghanistan:
An “odd guard guarding an embassy” is all that will be left of the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan next year. Thus Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared, unchallenged, and as though it were only up to him to decide in the first place. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff pledges to support only a “different role focusing on a humanitarian commitment,” indicating such open-mindedness as to risk having his brains fall out, and the New Democrats haven’t made a contribution to the discussion since their 2006 edict declaring that Canada should simply refuse the United Nations’ entreaties altogether because Afghanistan is just “not the right mission for Canada.”
