Innocently Out of Context

"I wasn't really processing what he was telling me. I didn't believe that these components you could use for something nefarious."
"I could never see myself engaging or doing anything like that."
"I just didn't want this conversation to continue taking place."
"It seemed more of a theoretical discussion."
"I thought perhaps (his alleged co-conspirator) was more serious than I ever imagined."
"If they [Taliban] believe they're resisting [presence of Canadian soldiers], then yes [they should kill them]. You've got to look at it from their perspective. [When a country is invaded, resistance occurs]...In Afghanistan, the resistance is the Taliban."
"The regular soldiers, the infantrymen, they don't know what's going on. It's not the soldiers' fault. It's the government that has taken the wrong position."
Misbahuddin Ahmed, 30, former diagnostic imagining technician, The Ottawa Hospital

Misbahuddin Ahmed was arrested in August 2010 on terrorism charges.
Mike Carroccetto / Ottawa Citizen

This educated young man, competent enough in his professional field to be a credit to his intelligence and his academic studies, but stumped wordless at being exposed to deviously sinister plans whose purpose could not possibly evade his consciousness, on how to react, how to respond. Exposed without equivocation, to the plans of two other young Canadian Muslim men who felt it their duty to respond to Islamist calls to join the global jihad against non-believers and the West, his first instinct, he asserts, apparently was to evade reality, certainly not to alert authority.

During a recorded conversation which the RCMP had covertly managed, the issue of a bag containing circuit boards and a transmitter was discussed in a conversation between Misbahuddin Ahmed and an unnamed co-conspirator whose own trial is pending:

"[The material was] just a key. And you put on top of the, what they call it, the food. And that will take care of it.", Misbahuddin Ahmed's friend informed him.
"The food will be cooked", responded Mr. Ahmed, testifying he was aware the other referred to explosives.
"Yeah, it will. It's really a fast cooker", was the response.

Mr. Ahmed has pleaded not guilty to the three terrorism related charges lodged against him: conspiring to fracilitate a terrorist activity, participating in the activities of a terrorist group, and possession of an explosive device. The Crown contends that Mr. Ahmed is one of three Ottawa men conspiring to mount terrorist activities in Canada and abroad through "violent jihad". One of his companions, Khurram Sher, has undergone his own trial and awaits the verdict.

Mr. Ahmed testified that his curiosity compelled him to ask "probing questions" respecting the components. One of which related to the transmitter range, and he was informed: "Two kilometres". Mr. Ahmed enquired whether his companion had learned "to make some good stuff, too. Did you try any of your food?"
To which his co-conspirator responded, "I did, actually." 
"Was it tasty?" asked Mr. Ahmed.

"In all honesty, you can say I loved it", was the response, with Mr. Ahmed testifying that he interpreted the response to mean his friend had exploded a bomb on some other occasion, but that's not the type of activity that he would himself be involved in, he made quite clear. During court proceedings Mr. Ahmed explained he felt his friend needed to "get rid of this stuff, and that's what I'm telling him", when he said himself to his friend he needed to "find a solution" for his problem.

As for the conversations that had been taped by the RCMP, Mr. Ahmed said he felt the Ottawa-based jihadi cell's conversations reflected idle talk, just a forum for discussion relating to "different concepts about jihad", whose purpose would be to help dispel "wrongful notions". Despite which they discussed how to raise funds for Muslims in conflict zones, and to send recruits for military training abroad, and to conduct "reconnaisance" in North America. All of it simply misconstrued.

He didn't think his friend Khurram Sher was serious, but was questioning the other co-conspirator to understand his point of view. The conversation was "awkward and uncomfortable". When he was challenged to serve as the "amir" of the group, he felt he had neither agreed to join nor serve as its leader. And then came his arrest on August 25, 2010. Before that, however, on July 30, he visited his friend's home to urge him to divest himself of hundreds of jihadist DVDs, circuit boards and the transmitter.

The solution, it seems, was for Mr. Ahmed to collect the bag of incriminating materials, and take it all away with him to his own home on August 2, 2010, where police found it when they arrested him, three weeks later.