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Guns, ammo, electronic gear among evidence against Khawaja at terror trial |
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Written by Jim Brown, THE CANADIAN PRESS
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Monday, 07 July 2008 |
Evidence pertaining to the Khawaja trial is released to the media at the Ottawa Court House. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
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OTTAWA - Police found three rifles, 640 rounds of ammunition and an array of digital electronic components when they raided the family home of Momin Khawaja in March 2004, the Ottawa man's terrorism trial has been told.
They also found a pellet gun and a much-perforated paper target mounted with duct tape to a pock-marked concrete wall in the basement of the house owned by Khawaja's parents, RCMP Cpl. Taro Tan testified Monday.
In addition, the Mounties carried off more than a dozen books on religion, politics and military tactics, among them treatises entitled The Religious and Moral Doctrine of Jihad, Decisive Battles of Islam, and Defence of the Muslim Land.
Investigators seized banking and financial records, passports and other travel documents, two desktop computers, a laptop and four hard drives from the house.
They went on to seize another two computers from Khawaja's work station at the Foreign Affairs Department, where he was employed on contract as a software designer.
Defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon adamantly insisted none of the evidence proved his client was part of an alleged plot by Islamic extremists to attack targets in Britain.
Among the firearms seized by the RCMP were two high-powered, 7.6-mm weapons, including one Russian-designed rifle that was equipped with a folding bayonet.
But all the guns were properly registered and Khawaja had a licence to own them, Greenspon noted in court.
He reiterated the point, with added emphasis, in comments to reporters after the day's testimony was over.
"I don't think that it assists the Crown's case in any way," he said of the weapons seizure. "It shows somebody who was in possession legally of firearms and ammunition and had been involved in shooting and target practice."
Greenspon also noted, during his cross-examination of Tan, that many of the electronic components seized by the Mounties were discovered in the bedroom of Khawaja's older brother Qasim - along with $10,000 in cash tucked under Qasim's mattress.
In a wiretapped phone conversation recorded three days earlier, the two brothers had discussed plans to withdraw a large amount of money from their bank accounts and convert it to cash.
"After a few days," warned Qasim, "they might freeze your account. They did it to me."
"They won't do it, trust me," Momin replied.
Greenspon chose his words carefully when asked by journalists whether he thought that Qasim - who faces no criminal accusations and is not on trial - may nevertheless have played a role in the alleged plot.
"You'd have to ask that to the Crown," said the defence lawyer. "Qasim has not been charged. You get some idea of the contents of his bedroom from the evidence today, but I don' know that anything more can be drawn from it than that."
Momin Khawaja faces seven criminal counts, including charges of financing terrorism, helping to facilitate a terrorist enterprise and making a house owned by his family in Pakistan available as a terrorist base.
The key allegation, however, is that he built a remote-controlled detonator for use in setting off fertilizer-based bombs in and around London.
The potential targets were said to include a nightclub, shopping centre and gas and electrical facilities. But the plan was thwarted when British police and security officers detected the conspiracies and rounded them up.
Five men were convicted by a jury in London last year and sentenced to life in prison. Khawaja, who has pleaded not guilty to the Canadian charges, is being tried separately by Justice Douglas Rutherford without a jury in Ontario Superior Court.
Previous testimony from Mohammed Babar, a former al-Qaida operative turned police informer, has indicated Khawaja took weapons training at a camp in northern Pakistan in the summer of 2003.
Babar recounted that the Ottawa man was "excited" to get a chance to fire an AK-47 assault rifle, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and a light machine-gun.
Khawaja was also overheard by the British security service MI-5 discussing an electronic transmitter, receive and associated equipment with some of the British plotters during a visit to London in February 2004.
British investigators also reported that Khawaja displayed Internet-based pictures of a device - dubbed the Hi-Fi Digimonster - that was allegedly assembled in his parents' home in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans.
It's that device, say federal prosecutors, that was intended for use in the British bomb plot. E-mail messages entered in evidence earlier in the trial indicated that Khawaja stayed in regular contact with Omar Khyam the ringleader of the U.K. plot, and once boasted he could build up to 30 devices once he was finished testing the equipment.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 07 September 2008 )
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