Tender Justice

The plot was conceived and the conspirators dedicated to their vision of justice - as citizens of a country which had placed its troops within a destabilized, terror-driven country threatening the world at large - as fervent Muslims to persuade Canada to withdraw from conflict. These conspirators were young Muslim men whose warped version of Islam and response to the battle-cry of jihad pledged them to violent destruction in the country that guaranteed them a lifetime of democratic freedoms and opportunities.

They chose to use those freedoms to conspire against their government, against the institutions of that government, against the citizens of that country. The values they were exposed to suddenly dissolved in the acid brew of jihad, etching upon the thought-processes of the Toronto 18 a resolution to damage Canada for the presumed greater good of Islam. The gang was infiltrated, evidence gathered, and they were apprehended before they could mount their planned and anticipated attacks.

After spending years in prison awaiting trial, a few were released to their own recognizance, and others were placed on trial. 'Others' who have managed to see the error of their ways. From whom the mantle of extremism has suddenly slipped as an ill fit, denying their humanity as gentle servants of the land, not irate monsters standing service to violent disruptions of civil life, and the destruction of innocent civilians.

For the fact of the matter is, they didn't mean it. They were just fooling around; you know how restless young men are, always experimenting with something or other, the excitement of rejection of authority uppermost in the minds of the restive, thrill-seeking young. Some young men gather in the fall with their elders at hunt camps, some, without their elders, seek out faux war games with paint-ball rifles, and get their thrills that way.

They simply went another step further and pretended for their own engagement in quasi-war, Islamist-style justice, to attend another kind of training camp, to learn how to use firearms, how to set off bombs, how to manufacture their own, in point of fact, along with how to identify targets. They changed their minds. Hey, cantcha take a joke? They found themselves turned around through the introspection that incarceration permits.

And today Zakaria Amara, the ringleader of this motley crew of adventurer-terrorists was handed a life sentence "for his role in a terrorist plot to bomb Toronto", along with 9 years "for his participation in a terrorist group" - the two sentences to be served concurrently. "What this case revealed was spine chilling" Justice Bruce Durno emphasized, while stating the verdict.

After all, targeting the Toronto Stock Exchange, CSIS offices, a military base in eastern Ontario using fertilizer-explosive-bomb-rigged trucks represents some serious issues in anger management. Still, these were young men all, and one knows the kind of absurd things young men become embroiled with. Particularly young men of a juvenile disposition who feel themselves to have been wronged, by extension.

So, the country's justice system has to have a heart. Didn't Mr. Amara admit he'd been wrong, that he regretted what he had been involved with? Didn't he express his abject apologies? Did he not describe how he'd met a Jewish man in prison and bonded with him, as just another guy, just like him? Doesn't he deserve another chance at life, to watch his children grow and enjoy his family life?

So isn't it fair and just and simply kind and empathetic to give him credit for time already served, and let the poor man know that he may apply for parole in let's see, how about six years' time? Guess it wasn't just the hi-jinks-Islamist-fealty kids who weren't really serious about blasting people to eternity in their pretend-absorption with Islamist jihad.

Canada's justice system is also susceptible to kidding around, seeing the apprehended crime of terror meriting a life sentence.

The joke's on us, after all.