Trial Begins for Two Charged in Canada Rail Terror Plot
The trial of two men accused of plotting to derail a Toronto-New York passenger train to protest the deployment of Western troops in Afghanistan started Monday in Canada.
Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser, both in their 30s, were arrested in 2013 in what police said was an al-Qaida-backed plan to sow fear across North America.
Both men have pleaded not guilty to a long list of terrorism charges.
Prosecutor Croft Michaelson said the two men planned to cut a large hole in a railway bridge in order to derail a train travelling between Toronto and New York, killing and injuring dozens of people on board.
The attack would have marked the start of a campaign of terror to try to convince Canada and its allies to leave Muslim lands, the prosecution said.
Michaelson said in opening remarks that Esseghaier, a Tunisian national who was doing doctoral research in Canada, was acting on the instructions of his brothers overseas.
Jaser, a permanent resident of Palestinian descent, wanted to "conduct multiple missions so people would realize they would not be safe until they left homelands overseas," Michaelson said.
The prosecutor said the two felt the attacks were "necessary to save their religion."
In 2012, the pair formed a "terror group" and were almost immediately infiltrated by an undercover FBI agent who had befriended Esseghaier during a flight to California, according to the government.
The agent's recordings of their conversations, other wiretaps and police surveillance of the two men checking out potential targets in the Toronto area will be presented at the trial.
The prosecution said the court will also hear Jaser questioning whether all of their effort to derail a train, which was to be filmed, would be worth killing only a "few sheep," or 50-60 people on the train.
He urged his alleged co-conspirators to target political leaders instead, prosecutors said.
The pair also mulled hiring a sniper, or a cook to poison food at a military base, or learning to shoot themselves in order to go on a murderous rampage, the government alleges.
According to the prosecution, Esseghaier began plotting after returning from a trip to an Afghan village near the border with Iran where he met with "mujahedeen in the service of Allah."
When he was first charged, Esseghaier had lashed out at Canada's criminal justice system, rejecting the validity of the proceedings against him.
He is representing himself at trial.
During the start of the proceedings he looked uninterested, appearing to doze off at times. While in detention he grew his hair and beard long and put on a ski jacket for the proceedings.
Seated next to him and separated by glass, Jaser wore a suit and tie.
Nearby in the gallery were his nervous parents and younger brother who told AFP they just hoped for "a fair trial."
The trial is expected to last up to eight weeks.
Source: Agence France Presse
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