Canada Frees ‘Deradicalized’ Al Qaeda Terrorist in Parliament Bomb Plot

No longer showed “any signs of holding onto extremist beliefs or radical ideologies.”

While Prime Minister Carney’s government targets the real threats coming from America and Israel, it’s welcoming back Al Qaeda.

Here’s a little flashback.

For years, police and CSIS spooks have kept a close eye on the Salaheddin Islamic Centre, a former warehouse in east-end Toronto. From the comfort of their cars, anonymous agents watched Ahmed Said Khadr – Osama bin Laden’s senior man in Canada – pray and mingle and collect donations for the global jihad…

From the early days of the investigation, police focused much of their attention on a single suspect: 21-year-old Fahim Ahmad, the man distributing the jihad videos outside the Salaheddin mosque… Police were still watching five months later when Ahmad used his credit card to rent a car for two other friends, Mohammed Dirie and Yasim Mohamed. The pair was later pulled over at the Fort Erie border crossing with guns taped to their legs.

But police ratcheted up their surveillance, watching, just before Christmas 2005, as nine wannabe jihadis trained for battle at a farm in northern Ontario. Authorities say the men fired weapons, watched videos and discussed possible targets, eventually settling on three locations: the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Toronto office of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and an unnamed military base.

As the plan took shape, however, 20-year-old Zakaria Amara allegedly grew impatient with Ahmad, complaining that the plot wasn’t unfolding as swiftly as it should. He is said to have taken matters into his own hands, researching bomb construction on public library computers and surrounding himself with his own gang of young, committed recruits. When the suspects went looking for three tons of ammonium nitrate – the same fertilizer Timothy McVeigh used to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City – police moved in.

At least one member of a group of terror suspects plotted to storm Canada’s parliament and behead officials, including the prime minister, if Muslim prisoners in Canada and Afghanistan were not released, according to charges made public Tuesday.

Police expect more arrests, while intelligence officers sought ties between 12 men accused of scheming to blow up Canadian targets and five other teen suspects and Islamic terror cells in the United States and five other countries.

Well we’re over all that now.

One of the ringleaders of the thwarted Toronto 18 terror plot has been granted full parole after the Parole Board of Canada found he no longer showed “any signs of holding onto extremist beliefs or radical ideologies.”

Zakaria Amara, who helped recruit members for a group that aimed to storm Parliament Hill and bomb several locations around Toronto, has been on day parole with multiple conditions for four years, and the board upgraded his release after reviewing his case last week.

In a written decision issued Friday, the two-member panel says Amara, 41, undertook a process to deradicalize while incarcerated and has used his day parole “for its intended rehabilitative purpose,” demonstrating “positive change, both in attitude and in behaviour.”

The decision, which includes several redactions, says Amara now plans to live in his own home and continue to structure his time around his full-time job, attending a mosque, seeing his family and “appropriate leisure activities.”

Nothing to worry about. I’m sure the local mosque will be quite understanding.