Abuse-of-Process motion filed in Ontario terror case

Lawyers for a Canadian youth found guilty of terrorism-related offenses argued that a police informant who infiltrated a home-grown terrorist cell broke the law. The youth in question is one of 18 men arrested in Toronto in 2006 in connection with an alleged plot to truck-bomb nuclear power plants and a building housing Canada’s spy service. He cannot be identified because he was 17, a legal minor, when he was arrested. Now 20, he was the first of the so-called Toronto 18 to stand trial.

Defense lawyers Mitchell Chernovsky and Faisal Mirza argued that paid Royal Canadian Mounted Police informant Mubin Shaikh entrapped the then-teen, who was found guilty in September 2008 of taking part in, and helping, a terrorist group. “There was an intolerable degree of governmental participation in the criminal enterprise,” lawyers argued. Seven of the other men arrested have had their charges withdrawn or stayed. The trials of 10 adults, including the alleged ringleaders, have yet to begin.

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