innocent until proven guilty
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on the arrests of terrorism suspects in Ontario this weekend...
on the arrests of terrorism suspects in Ontario this weekend...
"Every person charged with an offence is presumed to be innocent, unless and until Crown counsel has proven his/her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The indictment is only a formal accusation or charge. It tells the person charged what specific crime Crown counsel alleges that the person charged committed. The charge is not evidence. It is not proof of guilt. The presumption of innocence means that the accused starts the trial with a clean slate."
Suppose, just suppose, that one or more of the 17 charged yesterday with terrorism is innocent. This is not the common assumption. I suspect most Canadians assume that Ontario was in great danger from terrorists, that police nipped this danger in the bud and that all of the 12 adults and five young people they arrested are guilty.
All of which may be true. Terrorists do exist. There is the terror we don't think about, committed by nation states under the rubric of security sweeps or targeted reprisals. And there is the terror we do think about, the terrorism of misguided individuals, loons, right-wing militias or Al Qaeda and its Islamist acolytes. Militant Islamists have committed outrages in the United States, Indonesia, Spain and Britain to counter what they see as the crimes of these countries against Muslims. There is no obvious reason to assume that similar criminals won't try the same thing here.
All of which is to say that the Mounties may be absolutely correct when they say they stopped the 17 from using homemade detonators and three tonnes of fertilizer to blow up as yet unspecified targets in southern Ontario. There may indeed have been a terrorist conspiracy that involved what the RCMP assistant commissioner Mike McDonell yesterday referred to as "training areas," where militants tramped about in big boots, cooked on outdoor barbecues, built bombs and used a wooden door for target practice. That's the implication from the evidence shown to reporters yesterday.
Or it is possible that the only thing that these bits of evidence prove is that a group of young men went somewhere where they tramped around in big boots, cooked on barbecues, played soldier and generally acted like jerks — which young men are occasionally wont to do. The three tonnes of ammonium nitrate allegedly purchased was, as McDonell said, three times the amount used in the Oklahoma terror bombing of 1995. But, as he also said, farmers routinely buy three tonnes of ammonium nitrate "every day." They use it for fertilizer, not bombs.
In short, we don't know much yet about what these men and boys were trying to do. We don't know if this series of arrests, called Operation O-Sage by the Mounties, pre-empted the kind of actions that in the United Kingdom led to last year's bombing of the London subway by otherwise unremarkable young Britons.
That's one possibility. It's certainly the explanation favoured by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who yesterday praised the police.
What we do know about Operation O-Sage is that the RCMP, as well as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, have been tracking the suspects since 2004. We also know that at least some of their neighbours knew police were watching them. Presumably, some of the suspects did, too. If the alleged conspirators knew they were under surveillance, it seems odd that they continued along merrily with plans to make explosives. But perhaps they are not bright terrorists.
Or perhaps they are not terrorists at all.
With luck, we will get these answers at trial. This time at least, Canada has chosen to deal with alleged terrorists in the proper way, by charging them with criminal offences and allowing the case to come to court — in Canada.
During the next few days, much will be written and broadcast on the 17. Their lives will be re-examined through the prism of the arrests as reporters try to retrace the steps that allegedly led them to violent jihad. Unnamed security sources will leak details designed to bolster the police case. Families and friends will proclaim the innocence of those charged.
Take it all with a grain of salt. We know that police arrested people. We know they seized some materials — all legal — that can be used to make explosives. So far, we don't know much else.
All of which may be true. Terrorists do exist. There is the terror we don't think about, committed by nation states under the rubric of security sweeps or targeted reprisals. And there is the terror we do think about, the terrorism of misguided individuals, loons, right-wing militias or Al Qaeda and its Islamist acolytes. Militant Islamists have committed outrages in the United States, Indonesia, Spain and Britain to counter what they see as the crimes of these countries against Muslims. There is no obvious reason to assume that similar criminals won't try the same thing here.
All of which is to say that the Mounties may be absolutely correct when they say they stopped the 17 from using homemade detonators and three tonnes of fertilizer to blow up as yet unspecified targets in southern Ontario. There may indeed have been a terrorist conspiracy that involved what the RCMP assistant commissioner Mike McDonell yesterday referred to as "training areas," where militants tramped about in big boots, cooked on outdoor barbecues, built bombs and used a wooden door for target practice. That's the implication from the evidence shown to reporters yesterday.
Or it is possible that the only thing that these bits of evidence prove is that a group of young men went somewhere where they tramped around in big boots, cooked on barbecues, played soldier and generally acted like jerks — which young men are occasionally wont to do. The three tonnes of ammonium nitrate allegedly purchased was, as McDonell said, three times the amount used in the Oklahoma terror bombing of 1995. But, as he also said, farmers routinely buy three tonnes of ammonium nitrate "every day." They use it for fertilizer, not bombs.
In short, we don't know much yet about what these men and boys were trying to do. We don't know if this series of arrests, called Operation O-Sage by the Mounties, pre-empted the kind of actions that in the United Kingdom led to last year's bombing of the London subway by otherwise unremarkable young Britons.
That's one possibility. It's certainly the explanation favoured by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who yesterday praised the police.
What we do know about Operation O-Sage is that the RCMP, as well as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, have been tracking the suspects since 2004. We also know that at least some of their neighbours knew police were watching them. Presumably, some of the suspects did, too. If the alleged conspirators knew they were under surveillance, it seems odd that they continued along merrily with plans to make explosives. But perhaps they are not bright terrorists.
Or perhaps they are not terrorists at all.
With luck, we will get these answers at trial. This time at least, Canada has chosen to deal with alleged terrorists in the proper way, by charging them with criminal offences and allowing the case to come to court — in Canada.
During the next few days, much will be written and broadcast on the 17. Their lives will be re-examined through the prism of the arrests as reporters try to retrace the steps that allegedly led them to violent jihad. Unnamed security sources will leak details designed to bolster the police case. Families and friends will proclaim the innocence of those charged.
Take it all with a grain of salt. We know that police arrested people. We know they seized some materials — all legal — that can be used to make explosives. So far, we don't know much else.
— THOMAS WALKOM, Toronto Star (2006/06/05)
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posted by þΛųL jØŋαŦhΛŋ @ 17:30
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