Honouring Islam

"Short-term plan, you told me that you were going to blow yourself up in America." Ahmed Abassi

"I did not tell you I was going to blow myself up." Chiheb Esseghaier

"I asked you: 'What are you going to do?' You said: 'I'm going to blow myself up.'" Ahmed Abassi

"[I have] a principle, the principle that America should be wiped off the face of the Earth! This is an immutable principle! Even if the Americans are listening to me, I don't care! From the bottom of my heart I tell you: Allah willing, I wish that it would be wiped off the face of the Earth." 
Ahmed Abassi

Wishing won't necessarily make it so. And thinking and dreaming and believing something nasty doesn't necessarily make a criminal of the mind that entertains such thoughts. Many people all over the world hate the United States; for that matter many people hate, detest, feel like threatening, wish for someone's destruction, but not many act on that emotional impulse. People cannot be found guilty of ill-wishing.

FBI wiretaps contained in a newly released FBI document spell out the link between a Canadian terrorism plot and al-Qaeda, suspected but no more, up until the present. The RCMP had stated that a conspiracy existed under "direction and guidance" of al-Qaeda affiliates situated in Iran. An undercover FBI officer stated one of the suspects arrested in Canada, Chiheb Esseghaier, had lived and trained with a man identified as Al-Masul.

There lie solid grounds, if proven in a court of law that sometimes people who harbour ill wishes will take steps to produce a physical result harmful to those they hate, and that clearly is a criminal offence for which there will be repercussions. Conspiring to commit a terrorist act represents grounds for prosecution which any country must undertake, to protect itself and its citizens from violence being perpetrated.

Al Masul, according to the FBI, had stated that he "was in direct contact with the Doctor". There is an Egyptian doctor whose name is Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the terrorist al-Qaeda member second in command to Osama bin Laden, and who after the death of the leader in Abbottabad, Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALs, took his place. The FBI document refers to him as "Anwar Al-Zawahiri".

And it would appear that it was Al-Masul who had given "instructions" to Mr. Esseghaier, a doctoral medical engineering student in Montreal, now in prison, awaiting trial in the new year along with his accomplice, United Arab Emirates-born Toronto resident Palestinian Raed Jasser. The Arabic-language conversations between the men had been recorded by FBI investigators in March of 2013.

The document filed in U.S. District Court, New York, in advance of sentencing of Ahmed Abassi, another Tunisian who had met Mr. Esseghaier while studying in Quebec, who has pleaded guilty to U.S. immigration violations. Mr. Abassi, confoundingly wasn't charged with terrorism, but Mr. Esseghaier and Mr. Jasser have been, their trial to take place next year in Toronto, Mr. Esseghaier adamant that he will defend himself under Koranic law.

Suspect one: Chiheb Esseghaier, one of two suspects accused of plotting with al-Qaida in Iran to derail a train in Canada, arrives at Buttonville Airport just north of Toronto, on Tuesday, April 23, 2013

It is known that Mr. Esseghaier had travelled to Zahedan in eastern Iran, a gateway for extremists on their way to Afghanistan. In Iran he took training in jihad before returning to Canada. In September of 2012 the two, Esseghaier and Jasser, scoped out the New York to Toronto Maple Leaf train crossing trestle bridge spanning Jordan Harbour at Jordan Station, Ontario with a view to blowing it or a train up with massive casualties.

Mr. Esseghaier had attempted to recruit Abassi to commit to a bomb-making training course in Iran: "So I proposed to him a training, but he said I am not ready", stated Mr. Esseghaier in a transcript of conversations recorded by the FBI. In that same transcript the two men had argued over whether Mr. Esseghaier planned to become a suicide bomber.

After their discussion of committing to produce an incident that would be regarded in jihadi circles as "something big", such as planting a bomb on a bus, the FBI undercover officer had enquired: "Would that help Muslims?"
"It would help" was the response from Esseghaier.
"How?"
"It would help because you make pressure on them", he responded.

He was prepared to 'make pressure on them'. The destruction of a New York/Toronto train causing the deaths of travellers would do very well indeed to fulfil that purpose. And give Mr. Esseghaier reason to believe he had fulfilled his obligations as a pious Muslim.