BRAMPTON, Ont. - A young man was the "favourite son" of a terrorist plotting to kill Canadian civilians with guns and explosives, a Crown attorney alleged in court Thursday.
The Toronto-area men - the accused leader of a supposed homegrown sleeper cell and the 20-year-old on trial - shared a "bond to do evil," he said. "(The alleged leader)'s mouth was a river of ugly, criminal rhetoric, a Mississippi overflowing at flood time, a torrent of bile and hatred and indeed, incitement of explicitly criminal acts," John Neander, the prosecutor, said in his closing arguments.
"(The defendant) was there, couldn't avoid the flood, wilfully joined in it, was carried along by it and is guilty of this offence."
Thursday in court, the youth listened intently while Neander told Justice John Sproat that it would be "an insult to reason" to think that the accused did not know about the alleged leader's motives to do harm, and that a camp he attended was a training ground for violent acts, not simply a religious gathering.
But the young convert to Islam continued to follow his sage and to "get himself ready for Jihad, Jihad in the most evil sense," Neander said.
"Cogent evidence is that (the defendant) is an unqualified, unthinking follower of his emir, even when what the emir preaches is poison, even when what the emir preaches is criminal."
But even if the youth on trial did not know the true intent of the camp, where attendees ran obstacle courses and fired a semi-automatic pistol, he was exposed to the alleged leader's inflammatory campfire speech about bringing down "Rome," a reference to the U.S., Neander said.
The youth told a police officer following his arrest on June 3, 2006, that the winter camp was simply a religious getaway to get in shape. What sort of shape?
"That's the reason why these people are together," Neander said. "The bond they have is a bond to do evil."
