What Terror Plot?

When Canadians think 'Mafia', they think of the drama, suspense and romance of the "Godfather" or "The Sopranos" series. They think of powerful crime families, the royalty of crime syndicates, of brutal assassinations and drug and prostitution cartels operated hierarchically and dynastically out of parts of Italy.

They think of powerful crime lords who adore their families, dote on their innocently precocious children and their dutifully loving wives, and whose reputations for charity in their home villages are quaintly at odds with their fearsome reputations.

Canadians do not necessarily think about established mafia crime figures in Canada. We do not necessarily think "aha! Mafia connections" when reading of gun-running, people-smuggling, forced prostitution, drug trades, illegal tobacco production and sales, but the connections are there, just as they are there for gambling enterprises and corruption in the construction trades.

The connections are there, quietly pursued, with dramatic struggles between crime families, but little public notice taken. Not quite as in comparison to what occurs in Italy, the home country, for example. Oh, we do read from time to time of extraditions, of hearings, of trials, but nothing too terribly exciting.

And here is a public prosecutor from the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria, visiting Toronto, and being interviewed, speaking of rapacious Mafia organizations, there called the 'Ndragheta (the Mafia of Calabria), speaking of a book he has just published. In Italy this man, the public prosecutor Giovanni Falcone's life is always in danger.

He speaks of Canada as representing the 'perfect place' for Mafia types.

"Canada plays an extremely important role in the 'Ndrangheta, and in general, in Mafia activities and actually can be considered a very strategic country. Canada is important because it is a very rich country but also because Canada lacks legislation that can fight the 'Ndrangheta and gang crime in an effective way, since there is no criminalization of membership. Besides that, Canada is also a nation that is very protective of the rights of the person who is prosecuted, which makes it a perfect place for any Mafia gang to come and use the Canadian economy."

There, aren't we just terrific? A haven we are, for immigrants, for those engaged in illegal and contraband drugs, weapons, illegals, avails of prostitution and gambling; the wide open West of today. Now that's a distinction we probably would prefer not to be labelled with. We nice Canadians with our moderate world views and attitudes and phlegmatic personalities just like to live and let live. And the Mafia haven't been going around here as they do in Italy, murdering one another and innocents as well.

We should feel troubled at their presence. Do we? Perhaps not, actually.

We do - at least some of us - feel more than a trifle perturbed at the presence of maleficent forces portraying themselves as Canadians from far-off backgrounds for whom militant Islam has become a martyr's dream and whose homicidal tendencies do actually threaten the peace of our existence as a functionally decent society of a multiplicity of backgrounds striving to get along with one another.

And here are our security agencies tracking and identifying potential dangers to our society until they are successful in amassing sufficient evidence to satisfy themselves through long surveillance that the time is right to move in and make arrests. Canada's very own home-grown jihadist terrorist suspects. In whose defence Canadian lawyers leap to deny any possible ill intent while castigating the news media, the public, the justice system of 'pre-judging'.

And a chastened Justice of the Peace sees fit to permit release on bail.

Men accused of 'alleged' crimes of conspiring to abet terrorist activities within Canada. Activities which are meant to result in mass murder, destruction of landmark areas of the country; rather disruptive to everyday normal life in a civilized country.

Which means that despite the fact that had this triumvirate of martyr-seeking murderers not been apprehended their planned crimes would have terrorized the country, yet having been apprehended, the first of the three, Misbahuddin Ahmed has been released on bail with the permission of Justice of the Peace Louisette Gireault.

A mere Justice of the Peace has the authority to do this, to release an accused terrorist suspect back into the community? Well, ask Nicola Gratteri, chief anti-Mafia prosecutor in Reggio Calabria, capital of the birthplace of the Mafia organization about what happens when a relaxed justice system absorbed in its status within a tolerating and progressive society gives short shrift to its ongoing security.

"Members of the 'Ndrangheta feel comfortable here. They would never go to a place where they find themselves surrounded by hostility." And Canada, he adds, is not working hard to change that.