The Inner Conversations of a Tactful Mind

Half-baked evidence, and half-witted conversations
Firaz Khan May 22, 2008

And so it is that another four out of the 18 Muslims that were arrested in Toronto back in 2006 have been released from jail on charges ranging from blowing up the CN Tower and the Toronto Stock Exchange to beheading the Prime Minister of Canada.  Sounds elaborate and sensational.  And apparently, it was.

The Crown’s case for these men and three others has pretty much fallen apart as they weren’t able to prove that any such plot was going to take place.  The suspects apparently went on a camping trip in the dead of winter without proper equipment.  They ended up spending most of their time marching around so as not to freeze and die while making the occasional trip to Tim Horton’s for coffee.  It appears that the case for the Crown stems from a 10 hour conversation in a car back to the city of Toronto from some “jihadi terror camp” in the north of Ontario.  The paid RCMP informant, Mubin Shaikh apparently reported hugging one of the alleged terror suspects and felt something hard in his pants, which he believed might have been a gun.  Qayyum Abdul Jamal, whom the government painted as a mastermind and inspirational speaker, turned out to be an inarticulate average Joe that didn’t realize when one goes camping in Northern Ontario during the dead of winter, that they need proper equipment, including a warm tent. 
 
Other than that, there has been no real evidence to suggest that anything was going to happen.  My question is, if we live in a democratic society where we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, civil liberties and the rule of law, shouldn’t the government have a bit more evidence than some stupid conversation (literally stupid; these guys didn’t even know who the Prime Minister was)?  Perhaps with specific details as to when they were going to it, how they were going to do it and with what they were going to do it with would have been useful, before destroying the lives of these 18 people.  Maybe my standards are too high but I expect a bit more out of my government and those institutions that keep our country safe.

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