Crusade Against The West

The lawyers for Momin Khawaja, Canada's first home-grown terrorist who was convicted during his 2006-08 trial of terror-related activities, have for the last time appealed their client's sentence.  The last time that was done, the Ontario Supreme Court took the original sentence of 15 years in prison and increased it to the maximum of life imprisonment, plus 24 concurrent years.

Khawaja was convicted of financing and facilitating a group of British Islamist fanatics who had plotted to bomb various generally-crowded public areas in London in 2004.  Their plans included an eventual wider jihad, branching out to bring terror to a greater audience in the West.  They were ambitious and excited about their opportunities to become shaheeds.

Momin Khawaja too was taken with the intriguing opportunities opened to him in the name of jihad, scorning the kuffar who deserved to die.  He lived among those kuffar, was engrained in the culture and the society, and had a lucrative contract as a computer specialist with an arm of the federal government that would have required he have security clearance.

His family lived in a nice house in a nice suburban neighbourhood.  He attended school in the Ottawa area, and he doubtless had many non-Muslim acquaintances so he must also have known that they all had much in common, as human beings.  Yet he was so bitter about the actions of the West in going off to Afghanistan to free that country from the depredations of the Taliban, he had plans to join them in producing IEDs.

Those improvised explosive devices, needless to say, have taken the lives of many ISAF and NATO personnel, not to mention Canadians, and they have maimed and horribly injured many more.  Momin Khawaja, living comfortably within Canadian society with all the entitlements guaranteed him, found more in common with brutal butchers than those with whom he might have gone to school with.

Khawaja's lawyers are prepared to once again insist that he had no knowledge of the London plot, was just interested in being buddies with a group of grumbling aspiring-terrorist misfits in London.  He wanted to join the Taliban in Afghanistan.  It was there that he was intent on adding to the blood and gore, not in London, at all. 

As though that makes a huge difference; he was an enemy combatant in waiting, and planned to become one in practise.

He believed, according to his lawyers, that the bomb-detonating components he was feverishly working on were meant for improvised explosive devices to aid the Muslim insurgents in Afghanistan.  This will represent the fifth and final bench of justice, the last court of appeal for the imprisoned Khawaja, whose parents do not think highly of Canadian justice.

The Supreme Court will be urged to overturn Khawaja's convictions on the five terrorism-related convictions (convictions on two charges related to explosives and an explosive device are not included).  The goal being to have him acquitted, or alternately order a new trial.  His lawyers would even, gratefully accept an amended 12-to-16-year term.

Pleading, as they have, terrorism-lite.