Canadian Terrorist Gets Life
Tried In U.S.; Jabarah pleaded guilty to plotting embassy attacks
Stewart Bell, National Post Published: Saturday, January 19, 2008
TORONTO - Mohammed Jabarah was 18 when he left behind his comfortable suburban home in southern Ontario and made his way to the terrorist training camps on the dusty plains of eastern Afghanistan.
Yesterday in a New York courtroom, Jabarah, now 26, appeared before a U.S. federal judge to be sentenced to life in prison for his brief but remarkable career as a globetrotting Canadian al-Qaeda terrorist.
Also known as Sammy and Abu Hafs al Kuwaiti, Jabarah has pleaded guilty to overseeing a terrorist cell that attempted to bomb the U.S. embassies in Manila and Singapore until the plot was thwarted in 2001.
"I am pleased to see that a self-confessed terrorist has appropriately been dealt with by the full force of the law," Stockwell Day, the Minister of Public Safety, said. "Terrorism is a global phenomenon and Canada, along with its allies, is not immune to this threat."
U.S. prosecutors asked for a life term on the grounds that Jabarah was irredeemably devoted to the cause of Osama bin Laden, and as proof they cited a letter in which he wrote, "And if they release me, then I will kill until I am killed."
A sentencing memorandum claimed that while feigning cooperation with investigators, Jabarah plotted to kill the FBI agents and prosecutors working on his case, stashing away steak knives and nylon rope as well as bomb plans and devotional notes to bin Laden.
The Jabarah case has been closely watched by counterterrorism analysts trying to understand why youths living in Western countries are embracing the ideology of bin Laden, and in some cases committing acts of violence.
According to officials familiar with his case, Jabarah was radicalized by an extremist cleric during summer trips to Kuwait, where he was born, but he also hung out with extremists in Canada and fuelled his views online. "Fifty per cent of it was on the Internet," the official said.
Jabarah grew up in St. Catharines, one of four sons of a middle-class Kuwaiti-Canadian family of Iraqi origin. After graduating from high school,
he travelled to Pakistan, where Libyans helped him cross into Afghanistan.
He was part of a trio of would-be jihadists that included his older brother, Abdul Rahman Jabarah, a Canadian university student, and his best friend Anas Al-Kandari, the son of a wealthy Kuwaiti family.
After meeting bin Laden, Jabarah officially joined al-Qaeda by pledging bayat, an oath of allegiance, and the terror mastermind sent him to Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, who trained him in Karachi.
One day before 9/11, Jabarah was sent to Southeast Asia to help a local terrorist cell organize the embassy bombings, but Singaporean security authorities found out about it and Jabarah fled to Thailand and Oman, where he was arrested.
Two Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers accompanied him back to Canada and for the next two weeks, Jabarah provided detailed confessions. CSIS informed the RCMP but Jabarah was never charged in Canada. Police did not believe there was enough evidence to make a case.
Instead, CSIS convinced Jabarah to surrender to the FBI. He signed an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department in which he agreed to plead guilty and co-operate. Last year, a Canadian government watchdog agency said CSIS had violated Jabarah's constitutional rights by detaining him without cause and failing to provide him with a lawyer.
U.S. prosecutors said yesterday that while Jabarah was initially co-operative, and provided useful intelligence, he changed after his friend Al-Kandari was killed during an attack on U.S. Marines training in Kuwait.
Investigators searched his room and found the knives, letters and a newspaper article about Al-Kandari's death. Atop the article he had written: "By Allah I will Revenge your death." Also found was an article about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and an accompanying photo of lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. On Atta's forehead, Jabarah had written: "Commander of 11 September units, May God bless his sole."
Although Jabarah pleaded guilty in 2002, the case had proceeded in complete secrecy until yesterday's sentencing.
In the courtroom, Jabarah said he was opposed to terror-ism and violence and had been brainwashed by bin Laden but U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones said his actions spoke for themselves and imposed the maximum sentence.
Of the three young friends that trained together in Afghanistan, Jabarah is the sole survivor. Following Al-Kandari's death in Kuwait, Abdul Rahman Jabarah was killed in 2003 in Saudi Arabia, where he was allegedly involved in a deadly al-Qaeda bombing of a Western housing complex.
The al-Qaeda leader who trained Jabarah and gave him his assignment, Khalid Sheikh Mohamad, is now imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, as is Hambali, the terrorist he worked with on the embassy plots.
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