Charges stayed against four in T.O. terror case

Four more Toronto-area suspects charged in an alleged homegrown terror plot have had charges against them stayed, bringing down the number of accused to 11 from 18.
Ahmad Ghany, Qayyum Abdul Jamal and Ibrahim Aboud signed peace bonds at a Brampton courthouse on Tuesday morning. The indictments were formally stayed later in the afternoon.
Charges were also stayed against Yasim Mohamed, who did not have to sign a peace bond. All four men were free on bail.
Staying a charge essentially means it is withdrawn, but the Crown can re-activate it within one year.
The peace bonds impose bail-like conditions for one year, barring the men from possessing a passport, travelling outside Ontario and ensuring they abide by a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day, with exceptions for work, school and other situations.
The men agreed to sign the peace bonds in exchange for the Crown acknowledging they committed no criminal wrongdoing, CTV Toronto’s Chris Eby reported.
The Crown has not explained why it dropped the charges, which is customary in such proceedings.
Jamal, 45, who is twice as old as most of the accused, had been described in court documents as the alleged spiritual leader of the alleged terror group.
He spent 16 months in jail before being granted bail, with 13 of those months in isolation, his lawyer said.
“Certainly as far as I’m concerned … there should be some form of inquiry as to why this gentleman spent such a period of much time in custody and spent it in the fashion that he did,” Anser Farooq told reporters with his client by his side.
“The public should know why it was that 18 Muslim men were arrested and why it went the way it did.”
Jamal, who said he was beaten while in jail, said he looks forward to getting back to his life and hopes to go back to school.
“I feel very good. I feel very good and very relaxed,” he told reporters.
Ghany was an honours student studying health sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton when he was arrested.
“A lot of Western prosecutions on alleged terrorism charges are simply horse-and-pony shows,” Ghany’s lawyer Rocco Galati said on Tuesday. “I know that my client should never have been charged in the first place.”
Three of the four accused who had their charges dropped attended a camp in Washago near Orillia in December 2005 that the Crown had alleged was used for terrorist training. But on Tuesday, a prosecutor admitted that all these men did there was play paintball and run through obstacle courses.
“My client went to a winter camp with five days with some of his friends, and for that his life has been irrevocably changed into a Kafkaesque nightmare,” said lawyer Raymond Motee, who represents Aboud.
Charges have already been stayed against three of the four youth suspects, but this is the first time any of the adult accused have had the charges against them all but dropped.
Police arrested 18 suspects in the summer of 2006 and charged them with various terrorism-related offences. Eleven of them still face charges.
A prosecution spokesman said Tuesday that the trials for the remaining suspects will go ahead.
A Crown factum filed in court late last month alleges some of the suspects planned to carry out bombings around Toronto and storm Parliament Hill and behead politicians.
None of the allegations have been proven or tested in court.
Tuesday’s development comes as the trial of the remaining youth suspect continues. The trial for the teen, who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is not expected to hear from witnesses until later next month.
Lawyers have said the trials for the adults could be months or even years away.