Another Genius Jihadi Heard From

"God almighty says fight their leaders. So fight the leaders of this people."
"There's a gay parade. They come to the gay parade ... That's when we hit them. This is the plan."
"We are being watched. The government knows who we are and where we are at all times."
"Get out. Get out before we kill you all. We want this whole city, the whole country to burn. I could care less who dies. Everyone is a target."
"We may be viewed as too extreme, too radical. The thing is, we are."
Raed Jaser, Canadian Muslim jihadi

Chiheb Esseghaier, left, and Raed Jaser, centre, are accused of plotting multiple attacks. (Pam Davies/CBC)

An undercover FBI agent got more than an earful in the company of Raed Jaser and his accomplice in Islamist terrorism, Chiheb Esseghaier. As unlikely a pair of fumbling fools determined to wreak havoc and murder in Canada as a form of vengeance against a Western oppressor of Muslims. Raed Jaser came to Canada as a teen, and he and his family found comfort in the country's social programs, able to advance their personal interests if they cared to make the effort.

Chiheb Esseghaier came to Canada on a student visa, to study engineering; bio-engineering as it happens on a micro-level, and he was evidently quite good at it. There is something about the profession of engineering, engineers of various types and selections that seems to attract Muslims, luring them to the West to achieve their higher education through study visas. Engineers plan and help build things.

And the irony of it is that Muslims who veer toward violence in their clamouring to be part of the worldwide jihadist movement of Islamism, plan to destroy what engineers plan and help build. There is infrastructure destruction and there is the destruction of lives. The latter is the primary goal, but the former as a secondary goal will do as well, particularly well when the two are accomplished in conjunction with each other.

Mr. Jaser, a ne'er-do-well with some run-ins with the law, a disaffected, dissatisfied young man with a penchant for nastiness found a companion soul, as unalike as they are as personalities, in Mr. Esseghaier. Like an old married couple they argued about choices and processes, one preferring one type of assault, the other another, and they brought the FBI undercover agent into their inner sanctum of jihad-planning.

Little did they imagine that they were incriminating themselves when they fulsomely described their aspirations. But their admissions and their ambitions are being revealed, bit by bit in a Toronto courtroom. Plots ranging from assassinations at gay pride parades, to sniper-shooting politicians, to attacking wealthy Jews wherever they can be found and that, according to Mr. Jaser, is just about everywhere.

"They feel safe", said Mr. Jaser to the FBI agent; "We're gonna change that", he boasted. Raed Jaser has cut his long, scraggly beard and no longer wears long flowing robes that so distinguished him. In court he is dressed neatly in a grey suit, his hair and beard short, neat. Mr. Esseghaier, on the other hand, who insists there is no law but that of Sharia that he can be tried within, and who insists on defending himself, has eschewed a lawyer.

He wears a long beard, and his dark hair is curled and tangled. He looks nothing like the scholar, the academic, the micro-engineer he once was when he decided that mass slaughter was so much more enticingly rewarding than pursuing a career he so excelled at, in nano-technology.