12/01/09 – David Weingarten – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, next guest on the show today is David Weingarten, he's a filmmaker and he's responsible for this DVD I hold in my hand right here, Unfair Dealing, the Toronto Homegrown Terror Threat, the should be more famous, I would say infamous case of the Toronto 18.
Welcome to the show David, how are you doing?
Very good Scott, how are you?
I'm doing great, I appreciate you joining me on the show today.
Thanks for having me.
And good job on this, I appreciate any effort that people are making to expose these bogus terrorism cases in your country or in mine or any other place.
It does seem like if you're waging an eternal war on terrorism against a group that never had more than a couple of hundred members in the first place, and most of those got blown up by the US Air Force back in 2001, you gotta come up with some PR stunts somewhere for somebody, and of course we have an almost endless list of these bogus terrorism cases here in the United States, in fact we'll be talking about some of those with Petro Bartsevich in the next interview.
But this is an extremely important one, and I think that anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knew that this was bogus as soon as they heard the word.
A bunch of terrorists supposedly arrested in Canada with a plot to cut off the head of the Prime Minister and blow up the whole world, I think.
And how plausible did it turn out to be there?
Well, to date, I mean at first this case was presented by the RCMP, and that's our counterpart to the FBI here in Canada, presented as a single group of 18 people that were hell-bent on staging terror attacks in downtown Toronto, they had the means, they had the intent.
The story's a lot different now that three and a half years have gone by.
To date, seven of these suspects have been released, including one that was reportedly the ringleader.
Five have been found guilty or have pled guilty, and that's actually just happened in the past month or so.
And six of them are still waiting for their trial, three and a half years after the arrest.
And I should mention that three of those suspects have spent three of those years in solitary confinement.
Wow, so, wait a minute, suspects have been held in solitary confinement before their trial?
And for three years?
Well, that's right, and...
Well, wait a minute, does Canada have a Bill of Rights like ours that guarantees a speedy trial or not?
We do.
As a matter of fact, the Constitution lays out that we are entitled to a fair and speedy trial within a reasonable amount of time.
But I'm not sure how anti-terrorism legislation affects that, but in light of the sensational accusations and the sensational nature of this whole case, there's not a lot of public support.
There are groups that are lobbying for them to be released.
There are human rights groups that have demanded these suspects be released and put into the general population, or at least be allowed access to other inmates.
And in June of this year, that did happen, with the three suspects who had been in solitary up until that point.
What they had to do was, I believe, sign a document saying that the prison would not be responsible for whatever happened to them, and this was how they got out of solitary.
So in the beginning, they were kept in solitary, really, and it was shown because they were dangerous and they weren't allowed mattresses for the first couple weeks, and this is reserved for really dangerous inmates, but now it's sort of been twisted so that we'll let you out into the general population, but you're going to be responsible for anything that happens to you.
Oh, right.
They only were in protective custody, I guess, there in solitary.
Exactly.
Well, that's how they're spinning it now.
Yeah, very nice.
All right, now, and I'm sorry, give me the numbers again.
How many have been convicted so far, and how many of those have actually pled guilty?
Seven have been released, but five of them have, in the past month or so, either pled guilty or been found guilty, and this all happened after the first conviction, and the first conviction is a really important part of this case to look at.
It was a youth who was part of this alleged group.
According to the informant, and this is from somebody who had an intimate knowledge of the suspect, the informant, he said that this youth was a sheep, that he was kept in the dark as to any plans that centered around terrorism, any sinister plans.
He was kept in the dark.
He didn't know anything, yet this youth, just by being associated with the group, was still found guilty and sentenced to two years.
So I think that's had a bearing on, it's had an impact on what the remaining suspects are thinking now.
I think, you know, the sentiment is if this kid can be found guilty, then what chance do we have?
And they've spent three and a half years now in prison, already tried and found guilty in the media, and I think for some of them it would probably be to their benefit just to plead guilty and to finally see a sentence and to see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel.
Let me ask you this before we go further.
What's your interest in this?
You're just a journalist?
Or you know one of these guys?
Or you work for a lawyer?
What's the deal?
My training is in broadcast journalism.
I've done radio news, radio traffic, and some production work for CBC Radio in Toronto.
And in 2006, I started investigating 9-11 and researching it, and came to some pretty strong conclusions that have really changed my world view.
And it caused me to look at other incidents of terrorism in North America with more of a critical eye.
And one of those cases was the Toronto 18, which partly went down almost literally in my own backyard.
I, at the time, was living a block away from a warehouse that these suspects are accused of renting to hold bomb-making materials.
And looking at this case, I mean, all I had really known was the soundbite clips and sort of the hype that was really emphasized in the media.
But looking deeper into it, I started to see really big holes in the story and the fact that it was informants that were facilitating the really nasty parts of this plot.
Well, and very clearly in this case, right?
I mean, it becomes very plain in some of the news clips and different things that you have put together in your movie here, that this so-called group of guys, which I guess is not even really clear how many of them even knew each other and in what context, but this so-called group of 18 people had been under investigation for two years.
And then some informants, I believe two different informants, were sent in to infiltrate their group and then all of a sudden all these criminal charges came down.
Well, actually, some of them were under surveillance for as long as four years, going back to 2002.
And that is very interesting because four years go by, some of them are kids, I mean, they were between the ages of 15 and 43.
Most of them were in their late teens, early 20s.
Four years, this group or this collection of individuals were under surveillance, but it was only within the last four months of their surveillance in which as few as two, at least two, and maybe as many as four informants were sort of injected into the situation within four months of the arrest.
So when you consider that these informants played a facilitating role, and one is responsible for purchasing the fertilizer, another is responsible for this camping trip that was organized...
Now wait a minute, it's known for a fact that it was the informant that purchased the fertilizer?
You know what, I believe through court documents, you know what, he did facilitate it, I'm not sure where the money came from exactly, I'm not sure if it was on his credit card.
He did organize the purchase.
This informant, his name is Sheher El-Soaimi, and that can be actually revealed now that his name has been released through court documents.
He's an agricultural engineer, and with those credentials, or rather without those credentials, he wouldn't be able to buy the three tons of fertilizer that these suspects are accused of trying to acquire, and this was part of his deal when he made his deal with our spy agency here in Canada, is that this would be his contribution to the investigation to facilitate this plot.
Now wasn't there something too about a surface-to-air missile or something?
Or a shoulder-fired missile of some kind?
You know what, not that I'm aware, but I'm only thinking back to 2006, honestly, just from the initial coverage.
You know what that almost sounds like?
I may be thinking of two different ones.
It actually almost sounds like the Newburgh 4, that was in New York, I know, where some of these people who were mentally ill were allegedly trying to purchase Stinger missiles.
Oh yeah, I thought there was a second one.
Anyway, but this is the one where they said that these guys were going to kidnap and then behead the Prime Minister of Canada.
Do you know what was the so-called evidence for that?
It was wiretaps, and if you listen to some of the wiretaps, almost what they talk about is comical.
When they're referring to this plot to storm Parliament and behead politicians, I think one of them even gets the Prime Minister wrong.
He says, well, why don't we behead that Martin guy, that loser Martin?
He's referring to Paul Martin, our former Prime Minister, when in fact the Prime Minister at the time was Stephen Harper.
If you listen to the wiretaps...
Well, but he is saying, let's go in there and kill him, or they're just joking around, or what?
It sounds like you're saying they were plotting to kill somebody.
Well, I think when you hear the wiretaps, and I haven't heard the wiretaps, only whatever documents have been released, and this is a big problem, as much of this is covered by a publication ban, and the identities of many of these suspects can't be released, but when you hear this in context, or read it in context, there's laughing, and I'm sure that if anybody put a wire on any group of young kids, you would hear lots of probably questionable things brought up, but there was no...
They didn't even know where Ottawa was.
I mean, this wasn't a serious threat that...
What did they have in their possession?one handgun that they were going to storm Canada's parliament and behead politicians without any resistance.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, it's silly that they're going to be able to kidnap the prime minister and what have you.
Well, tell me this.
Is there even an accusation at all that any of these guys had ever been to Pakistan or knew a guy who knew a guy who once sent money to Chechnya, like Jose Padilla, or anything?
I think one of these suspects, I can't give you the name right now, one of the suspects had been to Pakistan recently to find a wife.
It's been characterized as a trip to go join a training camp, which, I mean, is not true.
There's been no further mention of that other than the initial reports, but people of the Islamic faith, sometimes they do go overseas.
I know friends personally have gone overseas to marry or to find a bride, and I think the problem is that these sorts of actions, which are really normal activities for anybody who lives in a free country, they should be able to travel freely.
It becomes characterized in the news as a training camp, or some of the suspects had attended a winter camping trip, and this is characterized as terrorist training, when in fact it's a bunch of 15, 16, 17, 18-year-olds hiking in the snow, playing paintball.
They did, in fact, fire at this camping trip.
Some of them did fire a 9mm handgun, which had ammunition that was provided by the informant.
Well, firing a handgun out in the woods is clearly training for murdering people or something.
Why else would any young male ever shoot at anything?
Cans on a fence post.
Well, exactly.
I'm sure if I went camping and someone had a handgun, I'd probably play some target practice.
I hope that wouldn't paint me as some sort of an extremist.
Well, it just goes to show you, in two societies, the American and Canadian society, where virtually everyone is armed to the teeth, the idea that anyone would ever do target practice alongside any other accusation means that they're a terrorist.
This is really the thing that I think is important for people to understand.
It's in the movie Unfair Dealing, the Toronto homegrown terror threat.
You talk about how when these guys went out there to play paintball, they stopped and asked the cops for directions.
They made themselves, they were as visible as could be.
It wasn't any kind of secret.
They were just going and playing paintball.
In fact, I live in Los Angeles, and only a few blocks from here I've seen there's a place where anybody can go and sign up and play paintball.
It doesn't mean that they're training to, you know, I don't know, march on Waco like the Branch Davidians supposedly were going to do, or blow up New York City or something like the Virginia so-called terrorists, the paintball terrorists there who were forced to plead guilty or face enemy combatant status and torture by the CIA.
This was Fort Dix you're referring to, right?
No, no, that's a different bogus one.
I know, there's so many bogus terrorism cases it's hard to keep track.
This is the Virginia paintball terrorists who were told, listen, this is their plea bargain.
Either you plead guilty to the maximum or we'll just call you an enemy combatant and turn you over to Donald Rumsfeld to be tortured.
And they said, okay, we'll plead guilty then.
But all they had done was nothing.
Yeah, and I think we see this pattern in a lot of homegrown terror cases.
The one you just referred to, I know the Fort Dix case where the pizza delivery man was accused of being a terrorist.
They all played a big part as well and it seems that they all follow a similar pattern, not only with paintball and some, you know, fertilizer being involved and being facilitated by the informants.
But I think in a lot of these cases you find that there's always an informant involved and in some way they're compromised.
And what I mean by compromised is you've got informants that are either drug addicts or they're severely in debt or maybe they're facing serious criminal charges themselves and they have some motivation to produce results for their handlers.
Well, let's stick to this one, particularly this case.
Again, I'm talking with David Weingarten and he's made this movie about the Toronto 18 called Unfair Dealing.
And in the movie, I think you just mentioned a different informant altogether, one whose name you've just discovered.
In the movie, you talk about a guy named Mubin Shaikh or something like that and this was one of the informants.
And well, we learn all kinds of interesting things from him, such as bomb.
Oh yeah, well, I only found out about that, you know, while the arrests were being done or whatever.
This is when the informants didn't even have any idea that there was supposedly a bomb going on.
What does that mean?
That's right.
Originally, this group was billed as a single group of 18 individuals who had the means and the intent to set off bombs.
It's changed drastically in the time since we've released this video.
In the movie Unfair Dealing, we point out, and it's been proven now through court documents, that some of these suspects didn't know each other.
This was a loose collection of individuals.
Some only met when they were sitting in the back of a paddy wagon.
So now what the prosecution has done is they've divided this party into two groups.
The first group is guilty of no more than attending a camping trip, which is arranged by the informant you were just talking about, Mubin Sheikh.
And I got the impression, I don't think even he realized how the information he was providing, I don't think he even realized how it was going to be used and how it was going to be spun in the media.
And it's actually, it's evident.
He recently wrote a letter to the RCMP, I think this was just days before he was supposed to give testimony.
Wait, wait, wait.
The RC which now?
Oh, sorry about that.
That's the RCMP.
This is the counterpart to the FBI in Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Oh, gotcha.
These would be our federal police agency.
Yeah, the Mounties in red and the horses and all that.
The Red Surge.
And Mubin wrote them a letter just days before he was supposed to give testimony in the trial of the first conviction.
And he's demanding $2 million above what he's already been paid.
And in the note, he pledges, if he gets this $2 million to aggressively defend the evidence and vocally support the role of the agencies involved.
Now what that sounds like to me is a veiled threat, that if he doesn't get more money, that he's going to keep talking like he has.
And he has gone public.
He said that many of the suspects are innocent.
Some of the suspects that are still in jail, he has, he said that they shouldn't be charged with anything.
They should be released.
And speaking about cutting off the head of the Prime Minister, one of those suspects is Stephen Chand.
And this gentleman, Stephen Chand, the suspect, is where the allegation of beheading the Prime Minister came from, through wiretap intercepts that he was involved with.
Well now, and now you're telling me that this informant, he's already said publicly, nah, some of these guys are innocent, and this case is mostly bogus.
And hey government, either pay up, he's basically openly blackmailing them, is that what you're telling me?
Well, it sounds, it definitely doesn't look good.
It does look like a thinly veiled threat.
And in fact, he has said absolutely that some of them are innocent, including the first conviction.
The first conviction was a youth who, he can be named now, his name is Nishanthan Yogakrishnan.
But Mubin has said that this young man is innocent, and that he shouldn't have been found guilty.
In fact, I mean, Mubin even talks about the length that they went to, to prevent many of the campers at this trip from knowing, you know, any sinister nature behind this camping trip.
When they were cleaning up shell casings after firing the 9mm, he told them it was so that squirrels wouldn't get poisoned by eating the shell casings.
And very innocent explanations he would give to many of the campers about these things, keeping them in the dark, and it's resulted now in a conviction.
And Mubin has said openly that this first conviction, this kid is innocent, he shouldn't have been arrested.
Right.
And you know, that really is important here.
If we have a presumption of innocence, which it seems like we ought to, especially in cases like this, that if you're part of a big roundup of innocent people who are being persecuted for political reasons, and the first conviction is a kid who is innocent, then think about, as you mentioned before, the position that that puts you in now, and whether you want to go ahead and try to fight at trial, or whether you want to try to plead guilty to lesser charges and go ahead and maybe even turn state's witness and bear false witness if it'll save you 20 years in a cage, you know?
I mean, this is a...
Yeah, well, it's...
Some mess.
You know what?
It's interesting that the first conviction, this youth was sentenced to two years in jail with time served.
That means the same day he was sentenced, he walked out of prison.
So...
Oh, well, I guess that ain't so bad.
Well, you know what?
Considering that...
Well, I guess it's a precedent for those who are considering how to maybe get off.
Time served in Canada is equal, there's a one to two ratio, so if you spend a year in prison charged and not found guilty, that counts as two years.
So this kid spent about two and a half years in prison, but was only sentenced to two years.
So that means, I mean, if he had pled guilty after a year in prison, he probably would have gotten out as well.
So I think that has probably influenced the decisions of a lot of the remaining suspects, that hopefully they can plead guilty, they can cooperate, and maybe get a lighter sentence, and maybe even be released the same day of their sentencing as this first conviction was.
Yeah.
Well, and then it's a win-win also for the government, because they get to be not liars.
See?
Look at them all plead guilty.
That's right.
That's absolutely true.
And I think it's very easy to point at this first conviction, this youth, and say, well, there you go.
He's a terrorist.
He's been convicted of terrorism.
But to look at the actual nature of his conviction and the decision that was made by the judge, the conviction was based on the fact that this kid stole walkie-talkies from a department store.
Now, the walkie-talkies were never used at the camping trip, but the fact that he intended to provide material support for a terrorist group, that's enough to be found guilty of terrorism.
And I think this case demonstrates, at the very best, our draconian anti-terror legislation in action.
And I think in the worst case, it shows that perhaps law enforcement purposefully rounded up innocent Canadians to inflate the number of terrorists in this so-called homegrown bust.
Mm-hmm.
Well, again, for people just tuning in, the movie is called Unfair Dealing by David Weingarten.
It's about the Toronto 18.
And well, it's pretty clear in this thing that this is nothing but Canada's version of Operation Showtime.
The government needed some money.
They needed some new terrorism laws.
They didn't have any real terrorists, so they made some up.
And in fact, you even named this one politician, Wajid Khan, is that it, who, you know, apparently decided to make a political issue about, see how patriotic I am and sicken the feds on these guys.
That's right.
The oldest suspect who was arrested in 2006, his name is Abdul Kayem Jamal, and he spent a year and a half in prison, much of that in solitary confinement.
This is a presumed innocent person.
He was released after a year and a half.
And the reason he popped up on the radar of our spy agency and law enforcement agencies here in Canada is that he had introduced a federal member of parliament to a mosque where he volunteered.
And before introducing this politician, he spoke out against the war in Afghanistan.
I'm not exactly clear on what he said, but, you know, this is freedom of speech here.
And if we're going to pretend that we have freedom of speech, I think we should support his right to criticize the role in Afghanistan that Canada is playing.
So after criticizing the role of Canada in Afghanistan in front of the congregation, this politician, federal politician, Wajid Khan, has tacitly admitted that he reported these views to law enforcement.
And I don't think it's a coincidence that he ended up being arrested in this wide dragnet that was cast over the Muslim community.
Well, geez, it's kind of funny.
In a way, you have a Muslim politician who you say basically the sermon that he heard was just against the Afghan war.
Did the guy I mean, in the media clips that you collage together there in your movie, you have the people talking about radicalization and and all these kinds of terms.
But did the sermon even allegedly promote any kind of violence or this is simply just one politician exploiting some anti-war sentiment and basically getting people entrapped on some bogus terrorism charges for his own gain?
Is that what's going on here?
I think that's how it looks.
There's a debate over what Abdullah Khayyam actually said in the congregation.
But the worst version of what he said is apparently he said that Canadian troops were raping Afghan women and killing Afghan children.
And this is the most extreme version of what he apparently said.
And I you know, whether that's true or not, it's at least half true on its face.
Well, you know what?
We are killing children, unfortunately.
I mean, there are news reports of this every day that we kill civilians, cars full of children.
Very sad stories.
In fact, I don't know of any cases where Canadian soldiers have been accused of raping Afghan women.
Nor do I.
But, you know, I mean, this is his right to be wrong in a free country.
Of course.
And you know, that's really the thing that we're getting to here, isn't it?
What a funny kind of convergence of circumstances where you have somebody who's brown, who's Muslim, who's anti-war, who knows a guy who played paintball and who knew a guy who stole a walkie talkie.
And now we have a terrorist plot.
Now we have, you know, this is, you know, Osama bin Laden's secret sleeper cell in Canada.
And he was going to turn the whole world upside down.
And I don't know how well people remember this story.
But when it broke, this was the most credible series of accusations ever leveled.
Oh, my goodness.
Thank God we have police to keep us safe from this terrorist nightmare.
Absolutely.
And this was really used to great effect for the politicians and for the government in power and for law enforcement agencies when the bust first occurred in the summer of 2006.
This case was used as the arrest came shortly after a renewal of Canada's role in Afghanistan and our continuation of waging war in Afghanistan.
And this case was used as justification for, you know, we should fight them over here before they they come over here and fight us on our soil.
And which is just absurd, because none of none of these suspects are now accused of attending terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
But the allegations that came out initially, and many of them were anonymous leaks from law enforcement, is that these were, you know, members of Al Qaeda, that they were going to attack the subway, the CN Tower.
A lot of baseless accusations were made.
And the problem is, with that, there was a publication ban on a good portion of the material in the beginning, and it still goes on to an extent.
And the danger is that the public can't find out the whole truth until the case is finished.
Three and a half years later now, we still don't know the whole story behind the arrests.
But in the meantime, the government can leak information anonymously.
They can use these allegations as justification for the war on terror, the war on our civil liberties, increased funding, using our tax dollars towards intelligence agencies and law enforcement.
And I think this film that we made was was important so that we could present this case to the public, you know, with a grain of salt and and say, well, hold on, you know, take a look at this and maybe consider these things before you submit to the government's wishes so easily.
Absolutely.
Well, good thing you did, too.
I really appreciate the work you did.
And I hope this thing gets play at, you know, art house, movie theaters, and I hope you sell a ton of DVDs.
And me as well.
And actually, there's a screening coming up.
If any of your listeners are going to be in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Cinema Politica is a great organization here in Canada that screens grassroots films, films that promote, you know, civil liberties, presumption of innocence.
And it's a great organization.
They'll be screening it this this week, actually, on or December 11th next week.
OK, great.
Thanks very much for your time on the show today, David.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
All right.
Everybody, that's David Weingarten.
The movie, again, is called Unfair Dealing, the Toronto homegrown terror threat.