Jahanzeb Malik’s alleged bomb plot plays to Canadian fears of attack on home soil

The strange case of Jahanzeb Malik does nothing to allay the Canadian public’s fears about a potential attack on our soil.

Malik is accused of plotting to use remote-controlled bombs to attack the U.S. Consulate in Toronto and bomb buildings in the financial district. Authorities allege Malik presented a very real threat, although the landed immigrant from Pakistan so far is facing only deportation, not criminal charges.

An investigation by Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP that began last fall turned up evidence Malik allegedly wanted to bomb the U.S. consulate in Toronto, as well as other buildings in the city’s financial district.

Malik, 33, who came to Canada a decade ago as a student, is being held while deportation proceedings take place. Officials won’t say why he hasn’t been charged criminally, even though they claim he had received weapons training overseas and tried to radicalize an RCMP undercover officer.

It’s likely the evidence fell short or sustaining a criminal charge involving terrorism, security expert John Thompson told Yahoo Canada News.

“But he’s walking the walk and talking the talk and seems to be drifting into that whole world,” said Thompson, of Toronto-based Strategic Capital & Intelligence Group.

“Police sounded him out. Would they have enough evidence for a successful prosecution? The Crown attorneys probably told them no.”

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Ideally, police would have wanted to learn who he was working with (Malik allegedly told the undercover officer he had known dead al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki) and what materials he acquired. Instead, they opted to simply deport him, said Thompson.

“He looks like he’s going to turn into a jihadist but he’s not one yet,” he said. “He’s not a citizen, why keep him?”

Would he have been charged under Bill C-51?

Thompson said he doubts Malik would have been charged under Bill C-51, the Conservatives’ suite of proposed anti-terror legislation that includes Criminal Code sections prohibiting the promotion of terrorist activities.

Not so, said David Hyde, who operates his own security-consulting firm.

“He was obviously talking about it; he might have been encouraging somebody,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “It definitely would, in my view, cross over the line under the new C-51 in terms of trying to encourage and facilitate and promote terrorism and terrorism activities.”

That said, while the government could use the case as ammunition to bolster support for the bill, Hyde said the legislation’s critics could also use it to show Ottawa has other legal tools, such as the Immigration and Refugee Act, to deal with potential threats.

“I think there’s really arguments on both sides of the ledger in terms of C-51 applicability here,” he said.

Multiple terror-related stories in the news

The latest incident comes as terror-related criminal trials take place in B.C. and Ontario.

A Toronto jury has begun deliberations in the trial of Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier, who are accused of plotting to blow up a railway bridge to take out a Via Rail train headed to the United States.

In Vancouver, John Nuttall and his wife Amanda Korody are on trial for trying to place Boston Marathon-style pressure-cooker bombs on the grounds of the B.C. legislature to kill those gathered for Canada Day celebrations in 2013.

In both cases, undercover officers (in the Via Rail case an FBI agent) were involved with the alleged plotters, going as far as supplying Korody and Nuttall with fake explosives.

If these stories have led to a bit of public paranoia, that was certainly on display Tuesday, when part of Metro Vancouver’s transit system was disrupted for four hours over a suspicious device left under a Seabus ferry seat.

The cause of all the fuss? A vintage Walkman music player.

The Walkman a shutdown of the Seabus terminal on the north side of Vancouver harbour for four hours, forcing homeward-bound commuters to take buses over Lions Gate Bridge.

The appearance of the device, with wires attached, and its location necessitated a full-blown response, said Anne Drennan, spokeswoman for Metro Vancouver’s transit police.

“We just couldn’t take any chances at all,” she told Yahoo Canada News.
“When we called the [RCMP] explosives squad in, they weren’t willing to suit up and go in and take a look at it physically. They elected to go with the robot.”

Vigilance heightened after pipe bomb found on transit line

It’s not unusual to get reports from transit riders of unattended packages or backpacks, especially since a 2012 incident where a pipe bomb was found on the guideway of the SkyTrain elevated rail system just after Halloween 2012. That case remains open.

Drennan said riders are encouraged to report anything suspicious by phone or through a special text code.

“We want people to be vigilant and check stuff out because God knows over the years around the world the transit system has been a target,” she said.

The response to riders’ reports can vary.

“The basic protocol is the same, but it depends on the circumstances as to how far you go with the protocol,” said Drennan. “Most of the time you can deal with it without ever having to call in the explosives squad.”

The vast majority of incidents are dealt with quietly, she said, except when they cause disruptions like Tuesday’s, which end up on the news. Often that results in a surge of rider reports in the following days, said Drennan.

Canadians increasingly sensitive to perceived threats

Thompson said Canadians probably are more sensitive to potential threats, with reason.

“Statistically terrorism is on the increase,” he said. “The threat is growing and the resources in Canada that we’ve designated to counter terrorism are swamped.”

Police are watching four times as many suspects as they were 10 years ago, said Thompson.

“They have a bigger caseload than they can handle and it’s growing,” he said.

But should we be spooked by every unattended item we come across?

“It really does sort of depend on context,” he said.

“Right now in Canada generally there is a broad threat, but the jihad movement is not usually in the habit of leaving bombs around. They prefer to do something a lot messier and a little more hands-on.”

People generally have a common-sense attitude, said Thompson, adding a lot of threat-assessment is instinctive.

“You see a suitcase left behind, say, by a middle-aged person who’s talking on their cell phone. That’s just being neglectful,” he said.

“If it’s a brand-new Samsonite case left behind by a young man who’s in a hurry to leave the bus no matter what you say, you get suspicious about it.

“If it’s on a park bench in the middle of nowhere, that’s one thing. If it’s a crowded city bus or a food court, that’s something else.”

Hyde said people who run transit systems or manage large, publicly-accessible properties are more inclined to report suspicious items today than they might have in the past. Bomb threats, however, don’t get a reflexive response.

“Sometimes the goal of the person phoning in is to disrupt,” he said. “The last thing you want to do is automatically evacuate and make it into something large.

“But there are protocols in a bomb threat that you want to look at in terms of doing a discrete search … that would not create such pandemonium and would not be so disruptive.”