Yet even more signs that our judges have severe rectal-cranial inversion issues and don't give two craps about the needs of our society. My emphasis added for the extra-idiotic parts:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090312.wkhawajanews0312/BNStory/National/home
An Ottawa bomb builder today became the first man to be sentenced under Canada's post-9/11 laws, as a judge meted out a 10 1/2-year sentence against Mohammad Momin Khawaja, atop of the five years he has already spent jailed awaiting trial.
Justice Douglas Rutherford of Ontario Superior Court essentially split the difference between the Crown and the defence positions on sentencing, calling Mr. Khawaja “a willing and eager participant” in a terrorist scheme based in the United Kingdom.
“Sentencing in cases of terrorist activity must strongly repudiate activity that undermines our core values,” Judge Rutherford wrote in his 20–page decision released this morning. “Canada must certainly not accept the exportation of terrorism from within its borders to victimize innocent people in other parts of the world.”
But he added that Mr. Khawaja was a lesser terrorist compared to certain British co-conspirators, who have already been sentenced to life in prison in the U.K. The judge considered them to be “away out in front of Momin Khawaja in terms of their determination to bring death, destruction, and terror to innocent people.”
Ottawa software developer found guilty on five charges of financing and facilitating terrorism. He was also found guilty of two Criminal Code offences related to building a remote-control device intended to trigger bomb blasts.
He added that Mr. Khawaja, 29, “is still a young man. There is evidence of some redeeming qualities in him.”
The Crown had been asking for life in prison, the defence for time served.
Mr. Khawaja's parents plead for clemency during sentencing. But Judge Rutherford wrote yesterday that their credibility was an issue, given how they turned a blind eye to a son's activities.
“What did his parents think was going on?” he wrote in his sentencing decision, pointing out that Mr. Khawaja was a 24-year-old living in his family home in suburban Orleans, Ont., whilst putting together a treasure trove of terrorist materials police later recovered.
“Reading those [the parents'] statements [at sentencing], one might think this was a very normal family situation,” Judge Rutherford wrote.
“There was no mention of the array of military-style rifles, the crates of ammunition, the other weapons, the projectile-pocked human target on the basement wall, the mini-library of violence and books or the workshop of electronic constructs found throughout the family home when police searched it.
“It is impossible to think that the other members of the family were oblivious to Momin's preoccupation with and proclivity to participate in violent jihad,” he concluded.
Judge Rutherford later added that "it was apparent that Momin and his brother Qasim lacked expertise in the effort to perfect the hifidigimonster" – the name of the detonation device at the centre of the bomb scheme – but it would be folly to conflate amateurishness a lack of "seriousness of his criminal intent."
The judge dispensed with conventional criminal-justice wisdom that would have awarded Momin Khawaja a two-for-one credit for his five years in custody, a logic that would have eaten 10 years off his penitentiary sentence.
“Such a large block of credit cannot but invite public suspicion, even if unfairly, that the sentencing is being manipulated by delay in going to trial,” Judge Rutherford ruled. He decided instead that Mr. Khawaja should get the 10.5 years on top of the time spent in custody, with no chance of parole for five years.
Effectively, those factors make the ruling more akin to a 15 or 20-year sentence than a 10-year sentence.
Mr. Khawaja, a Pakistani-Canadian born in Ottawa, grew up in Canada prior to falling in with a British cell of al-Qaeda-inspired extremists.
He is he first criminal to be sentenced under Canada's controversial Anti-Terrorism Act, a controversial law passed just months after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. There were no sentencing precedents prior to today's decision.
The resolution of the important test case has been keenly anticipated for years, though appeals are looming. After Mr. Khawaja was arrested in 2004, matters frequently bogged down in preliminary arguments. Judges in various courts spent years wrestling with implications of the anti-terror law and the international investigation that targeted Mr. Khawaja.
The trial itself was a relatively speedy affair that concluded in 29 trial days spread out over six months last year. Nearly all of the Crown evidence went unchallenged into the court record.
Mr. Khawaja was left with little to offer in his defence: The investigation against him amounted to a rare textbook counterterrorism case led by British agents, but also involving Canadian and U.S. counterparts, who managed to accomplish the rare feat of converting secret intelligence into evidence publicly produced in open court.
As he passed sentence, Judge Rutherford considered both the lengthy pretrial legal debates and the admissions made by Mr. Khawaja's legal team. He cautioned that “there is an ethical duty on trial counsel not to unnecessarily take up the time of the law courts” but also added that courts should give “some specific incentives” to accused who admit incriminating facts at trial.
Mr. Khawaja was found guilty of seven crimes last October. The most serious charges involved two counts of bomb-making.
British agents spotted Mr. Khawaja visiting London for three days in 2004, as he interacted with a cell of local extremists who were under surveillance. Codenamed "Undue Haste" before he was identified, Mr. Khawaja was caught on tape giving them a progress report on a detonator he was constructing in Canada.
The surveillance was rounded out by police discovery of 600 kilograms of ammonium nitrate fertilizer stashed in a storage shed in London.
Authorities also intercepted e-mails Mr. Khawaja sent from Canada to the British ringleader, Omar Khyam, about a gadget codenamed “the Hi Fi Digimonster.”
“Praise the most high, we got the devices working. I am gonna try and get a booking asap to come over and see you,” Mr. Khawaja wrote to his co-conspirator, a few weeks before his London trip. “One transmitter that sends the signal, another receiver that will be at a distance of one to two kilometres ... send out five volts down the line and then we get fireworks!”
In 2007, members of the British cell were sentenced to life in prison after a jury found they were plotting to bomb a shopping mall or night clubs. Some peripheral figures in the U.K. group were never arrested, but later surfaced as suicide bombers in the subway bombings in London that killed 52 people in 2005.
There was no evidence presented at trial that Mr. Khawaja met the subway bombers while he was in Britain.
Judge Rutherford also concluded that the Crown failed to provide any evidence that he had specific knowledge of any U.K. targets contemplated by the London ringleaders.
This was a key finding, as the lack of mens rea led Judge Rutherford to ratchet down two bomb-making charges from relatively hefty Antiterrorism Act offences, to less serious offences long ensconced in the Criminal Code. The impact is made clear in the sentence meted today, with Mr. Khawaja being sentenced to for years in total for the bomb-making charges.
The other five charges, less-serious Anti-Terrorism Act offences involving facilitation and participation in terrorist activities, resulted in terms of between three months and two years each.
These lesser charges involve Mr. Khawaja's travels in Pakistan in 2003, where he took paramilitary training in the lawless mountain regions of the country. An eyewitness testified his face lit up shortly after the training, as he recounted how he learned to fire a rocket launcher.
Full details were never disclosed at trial, but some evidence indicates that certain “core” al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan took an interest in meeting the Western jihadists, and in making sure they got training and discussing targets.
Mr. Khawaja was further convicted of offering up a house belonging to a Pakistani uncle to fellow extremists he was meeting over there. Judge Rutherford agreed with the Crown that this offer of a loan amounted to a form of material support.
Activities in Canada also led to the convictions. In addition to building detonators, Mr. Khawaja directed wire transfers of money to individuals overseas.
Today's sentencing might help Canadian officials argue that they can resolve terrorism cases in open court. The country's agencies have long been criticized for being soft on terrorism or for chasing suspects out of the country, and leaving them for other nations to deal with.
So in essence, the stupe who places the bomb (who is typically a stooge and the lowest rung on the ladder) is going to get more hammered than the brains and creators. Predictable, but no less pathetic.
Plus, hope and pray that this idiot refuses any counselling or treatment so he takes the full ten year ride. Because if he makes the right noises, look for this arse to be living next to you within a little more than three years.
There really won't be anything that has a whiff of justice until there is a sufficient body count.
