Known For The Friends He Kept

"I strongly believe that without the influence of Mr. Alizadeh, this guy [Misbahuddin Ahmed] wouldn't be here today. He realizes he was naive."
"He realized late in the day that he was getting into trouble."
Dr. Wagdy Loza, Criminal assessment expert, former chief psychologist, Kingston Penitentiary

"Unlike all the others [responding to a "terrorist" psychological model questionnaire] he [Ahmed] knew that his responses would be made public."
"It isn't too hard to figure out what the favourable pro-social responses are, is it? He has incentive in these circumstances to fake good."
Crown prosecutor Jason Wakely, Ottawa

Misbahuddin Ahmed

Dr. Loza based his assessment of Misbahuddin Ahmed -- a 31-year-old former diagnostic imaging technician employed at The Ottawa Hospital who was convicted by a jury of two terrorism-related offences, that the man is humble, a timid personality who had failed to realize his association with a radicalized acquaintance would have such dire consequences -- on a psychological model meant to measure terrorist tendencies. This was a test that Dr. Loza had himself developed and tested with colleagues internationally.

According to Dr. Loza, the inmate population of convicted terrorists in Canada is too limited in numbers for the production of a meaningful made-in-Canada psychological test. Tests typically meant to assess the minds of of garden-variety criminal inmates are not very useful in assessing what might conceivably motivate terrorists. His own "terrorist" psychological model was specific to attitudinal mindsets featuring the state of Israel, women, religion and western democracy.

And it was Misbahuddin Ahmed's responses to key questions contained in that psychological model of Dr. Loza's that Crown prosecutor Jason Wakely questioned. Venturing to state his understanding that volunteers on whom the test was graded for usefulness were guaranteed anonymity for their troubles. None among them furthermore, was a convicted terrorist. The fact that Mr. Ahmed's conviction of conspiracy to commit a terrorist offence and participating in the activities of a terrorist group set him apart.

Making him inclined to respond with self-serving answers. And in so doing completely negating the test results on which Dr. Loza based his conclusions that, as he stated, Misbahuddin Ahmed is a humble, timid man with no intention whatever of causing harm to society. It was his devotion to the friendship he had groomed with committed jihadist Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh, sentenced last month to 24 years in prison for plotting a terrorist act to take place in Canada, that did him in.

Get that? Friendship, not malicious intention is all the man is truly guilty of. Misbahuddin Ahmed, a very nice-looking young man, father of three young children, himself only 31 years of age, admitted at trial that though he did eventually understand the reality that his friend was committed to carrying out terrorist acts, he did not, as a loyal Canadian citizen report the man to authorities, but instead continued their friendship, hoping, the claimed, to dissuade Mr. Alizadeh.

At the trial it was revealed that Mr. Ahmed had been warned by friends to keep his distance from Mr. Alizadeh. It would appear that the knowledge of his commitment to terrorism was well enough known. Yet Mr. Ahmed continued to foster the relationship. In other words, neither Mr. Ahmed, the innocent, nor his knowledgeable friends, aware that Mr. Alizadeh was planning a terrorist atrocity within Canada to injure or murder innocent Canadians, saw any need to alert authorities.

However, based on his conclusions, Dr. Loza feels the man who had responded to his terrorist questionnaire so swimmingly should serve his sentence in the community since no ameliorating programs exist in the Canadian prison system that could serve to turn terrorists imprisoned away from violent jihad. Furthermore, he advanced the notion that Mr. Ahmed's advanced religious knowledge could be useful in helping to change the minds of radicalized inmates.

So Mr. Ahmed, the gentle and humble medical technician is so well versed in his religious doctrine, held to be a religion of peace, that he clung to the friendship of a man he understood to be planning a violent atrocity on Canadian soil.