Extending Human Rights to Jihadis Dedicated to Koranic Jihad Counselling to Mass Murder

"The question here is not actual prejudice, which in these kinds of circumstances is impossible to gauge, but prejudice to the due administration of justice flowing from the denial of a jury selection method which was in law properly invoked."
"[The jury selection process allows defendants to make decisions whether prospective jurors may be questioned on impartiality]."
"It was an error of law for the trial judge to refuse to exercise a discretion based on a view that a remedy not sought by Jaser would have better achieved his ends." 
"Here, one jury was selected for both appellants. In the circumstances of this case, as the jury was not properly constituted for Jaser, it cannot be considered to have been properly constituted for Esseghaier."
Ontario Court of Appeal

"The decision might be a bit hard for some people to get through, because there's a lot of technical language."

"But the bottom line is the fair jury selection process is a hallmark of Canadian justice. Mr. Jaser has been in jail since 2013, and still hasn't had a trial in front of a jury that was chosen legally, so we think this is the right result."

Megan Savard, one of Jaser's lawyers

"Fair jury selection is especially important in cases with saturation-level publicity and it can be hard to find impartial jurors in a highly publicized case like this one."

"So it is important to use the jury selection procedure created by Parliament. Jury selection is one of the few things that a defendant gets to choose around mode of trial and the courts are always protective of it."

Frank Addario, one of Jaser's lawyers

The Ontario Court of Appeal has ordered a new trial for Raed Jaser, left, and Chiheb Esseghaier. The men were found guilty on terror-related charges in connection with a plot to derail a passenger train. (John Mantha/Chris Young/The Canadian Press)

Found guilty at trial of terrorism in connection with a plot they decided upon out of many discussed between the two men -- to derail a Via Rail passenger train between Canada and the United States -- Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier have been the beneficiaries of the Ontario Court of Appeal finding the jury that had convicted them in 2015 had not been properly selected. It was the lawyers for Raed Jaser who had challenged the legality of the jury makeup, but his victory in being granted a new trial has been extended to his fellow jihadist Chiheb Esseghaier.

During the trial that convicted him of terrorism charges, Esseghaier scorned the Canadian justice system. It was only under Sharia law that Koranic justice could be meted out. And since the Koran extols the virtues of jihad and exhorts its faithful to embrace jihad, the man held that he was fully justified in plotting a terrorist attack with the co-defendant for the purpose of avenging Muslims in countries that the West had identified as harbouring threats to the West through a series of deadly attacks.

The trial that saw these men being found guilty on eight terror-related charges between them saw them sentenced to life in prison. Life in prison in Canada is nothing like a sentence of life imprisonment; these two would-be slaughterers of innocent life under Canadian law would have the opportunity of appearing before a parole board in 2023, a decade after they were arrested, eight years after being found guilty of terrorism, to plead for parole accelerating the opportunity of becoming free men to roam the streets of Toronto and Montreal to resume their psychotic fantasies of vengeance.

Accused Chiheb Esseghaier (L) and Accused Raed Jaser sit in the University Avenue courthouse in Toronto on Jan. 29, 2015. Sketch by Pam Davies / Toronto Sun/ Postmedia Network

Following their convictions on terrorism charges, through the lawyers representing their interests both challenged their convictions, Esseghaier continuing to represent himself after firing his court-appointed lawyers. According to the legal finding of the Ontario Court of Appeal recently brought down, the trial judge had erred in denying Jaser the method of jury selection he had stated was his preference, that prospective members of the jury be questioned on their impartiality.

Given that the news media were loud, front and centre for months on end about this case and the two  jihadis' actions and plots and the testimony of a undercover FBI agent who had convinced them that he was willing to aid and finance their plot as a sympathetic-to-the-cause fellow Muslim, no one could possibly among the general public, fail to have consumed the news where it was made clear that the case against the two was fairly ironclad, as terrorists.

The sham that questioning would result in, to elicit from each juror a self-professed capacity to remain neutral irrespective of having been aware of the details of the case through daily reportage, was dismissed out of hand by the presiding judge. He decided against having the jury pool appointing 'triers' who would question the other jurors as to their capacity to wipe their minds clean of impressions of guilt, to view the accused neutrally, to arrive at an opinion as to guilt or innocence.

The trial judge responded to Jaser's request for the jury to be chosen by rotating triers with the intention of excluding any jurors who professed an incapacity to be neutral when sitting in judgement at trial by stating he was not prepared to grant the request since the issue could be solved by the use of static triers, an alternative he imposed, and now rejected by the Court of Appeal, which has ordered new trials for both convicted terrorists.

A screen grab from court exhibit surveillance video of September 2012 for train bridge terror plot released Feb. 9, 2015. Court Exhibit

With the presentation of the same evidence that had been used in the original trial it is difficult to see what can be achieved in new trials other than taxpayer expense in a situation that can only logically result in a like finding of guilt on the part of both men. The recording where they discuss terror plots to be carried out to retaliate for military actions Canada took part in, in Muslim countries, the photographs showing the two examining the likeliest site they would use to derail a train full of people over an overpass for maximum carnage, will all be re-presented.

This represents yet another instance where Western justice bends over backward in an energetic, guilt-ridden, good-faith response to deadly jihadist violence against its own civilian communities to ensure that those who dedicate themselves to the annihilation of innocent lives are still deserving of 'justice' untrammelled by any vestige of due punishment accomplished by sidestepping the fine points of the law. 

The situation is right in line with 'progressive' values that punctiliously avoid identifying Islam with violence, Muslims with terrorism, profiling and common sense observations that terrorism in today's world is invariably linked to the grim pathology of Islamist ideology of conquest. This is uncivil, and wildly unacceptable to draw conclusions from reality to identify Muslims with terrorism. And so subterfuges and delicate maneuvering is undertaken to avoid giving offence while at the same time practising limp defence. 

Obsequious and nerve-rattling conciliation that only results in the Muslim world responding with contempt, recognizing the weakness of the tolerance that the West sees as its strength and the world of Islam identifies as fear and weak-willed responses from a non-Muslim world community ripe for conquest.

The appeal in the case centres on the way the first trial's jury was selected. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)