Court doubles Khawaja’s sentence

By Ian Macleod, Ottawa Citizen

December, 17, 2010

OTTAWA – Ontario’s highest court has more than doubled the 2009 prison sentence handed to convicted Ottawa terrorist Momin Khawaja, the first Canadian convicted under the Anti-terrorism Act, and increased the sentences of three men convicted in the so-called Toronto 18 terror plot.

In a stinging decision released today, the three-judge panel imposed what amounts to a 24-year sentence on Khawaja, overturning the 15-year sentence Ottawa trial judge Douglas Rutherford imposed on him for his role in a 2004 al-Qaeda inspired plot to bomb public sites in and around London, England. Rutherford gave Khawaja, then 29, credit for the five years he spent in pre-trial custody, reducing his term to 10.5 years.

Even so, the defence appealed the sentencing as too harsh and asked that he be freed based on time served. Crown prosecutors cross-appealed, seeking a tougher sentence.

The appeal court’s decision includes a life term on one of six charges – Rutherford initially imposed a four-year term on the same offence – with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

Khawaja’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, told a news conference at his downtown Ottawa office that he will urge his client, who is in a supermax prison north of Montreal, to appeal Friday’s decision to the Supreme Court.

The court’s decision also overturned Rutherford’s striking down as unconstitutional the essential section of the Act requiring authorities to prove terrorism offences are motivated for political, religious or ideological reasons.

The decision means there is once again be a clear legal distinction between terrorism and other crimes.

The section was declared unconstitutional in October 2006 by Rutherford. His ruling was not binding and the federal government chose to ignore it. But many legal experts believed it was only a matter of time before a higher court was asked to settle the issue.

“Terrorism must not be allowed to take root in Canada. When it is detected, it must be dealt with in the severest of terms,” the judgment said.

Two members of the so-called Toronto 18 terror plot, Saad Gaya and Saad Khalid, who received 12-year and 14-year sentences for participating in a plot to detonate powerful truck bombs in downtown Toronto, also had their sentences increased substantially – to 18 years for Gaya and 20 for Khalid.

“In imposing the sentence he did, the sentencing judge under-emphasized the enormity of the respondent’s crime and over-emphasized his rehabilitative prospects,” the appeals court wrote in Khalid’s judgment, a sentiment echoed in Gaya’s.

Zakaria Amara, the admitted ringleader of the Toronto 18 plot, pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced in January to life in prison. Despite telling a sentencing hearing he deserved Canadians’ “absolute contempt” along with whatever sentence the judge imposed, he promptly sought leave to appeal after receiving a life term. The appeals court on Friday dismissed that appeal, noting Amara masterminded a plot that would likely result in “indiscriminate killing of innocent people on a potentially massive scale.

“Indeed, in the appellant’s case, a strong argument can be made that widespread carnage was precisely the outcome that he intended,” the judgment stated.

Khawaja’s case is the first time an appellate court in Canada has determined sentence for terrorism offences. During a hearing in May, prosecutors argued terrorism “is conceptually and morally distinguishable from ordinary crime because it strikes at the very fabric of our free and democratic society.” Khawaja was convicted of helping a cell of Islamic extremists plot to bomb London nightclubs and other targets in 2004.

The Toronto 18 appeals, meanwhile, were being closely watched as another key player in the group’s plot to detonate bombs in downtown Toronto is to be sentenced next month. The Toronto 18, which also plotted an armed assault on Parliament, was dismantled in June 2006.

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