No trial has yet been held. In fact, no trial date has even been set.
The accused Iranian is Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh, 32, a Kurd. He remains in jail, although the other two men have been granted bail. Presumably, the courts assume the Indian and Pakistani could be extradited if they fled home, but that if Alizadeh flees to Iran, he will be gone.
The three men were arrested two years ago last Friday.
As it turned out, there was no danger that Alizadeh would have been able to blow up anything. Police had long been sneaking into his apartment and replacing the detonators he had been building with harmless replicas.
The Globe and Mail, Canada’s main national newspaper, reported that the probe began three years before the arrests when federal police were investigating suspected Muslim extremists.
Agents on Project Samossa (all RCMP terrorism probes of national scope start with the letter “s”) kept taps on suspected conspirators operating in Winnipeg, Ottawa and several other Canadian cities.
For example, The Globe and Mail said, police monitored the suspects’ use of public-access computers in colleges and libraries, and at least one payphone outside a grocery store, techniques used by people who wish to avoid police surveillance.
The ringleader has been tabbed as Alizadeh, a gangly 30-year-old at the time of his arrest, who is accused of having direct ties to terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is not accused of any ties to the government of the Islamic Republic or to the opposition to that government. His ties appear to be with Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda inspired groups that are fighting Coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Alizadeh moved to Canada when he was about 20 years old. He worked in a halal grocery store in Winnipeg, Manitoba, before taking electronics courses at Red River College in Manitoba province.
He is accused of raising funds for foreign terrorists and plotting bombings. Police say they’ve amassed considerable evidence against him, principally 59 homemade circuit boards that could have been used to set off bombs from a remote location.
The devices were allegedly seized from a bedroom closet. Police say they sneaked into Alizadeh’s apartment, spotted the circuitry and then made harmless versions of them to switch with the originals.
The discovery of the circuit boards was a growing concern, one source told The Globe and Mail, because police found more of them with each surreptitious visit.
A key question is whether the circuitry was to be used in Canada or overseas, and what the targets might have been. Published reports have said that Parliament Hill was discussed in the initial “chatter” first overheard by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). But this allegation is not in a Crown (prosecution) brief circulated to lawyers.
Police believe Alizadeh was about to head to Afghanistan at the time of his arrest, possibly to lead an insurgent or Al-Qaeda cell whose leadership had been killed by NATO forces. The authorities said they would have preferred to allow the conspiracy to simmer longer and to gather more evidence of the group’s plans and activities, but made the arrests rather than allow Alizadeh to leave Canada.
