Video distributed outside mosque praised 9/11
COLIN FREEZE
theglobeandmail.com
Globe and Mail Update
TORONTO — A video lionizing the 9/11 hijackers as martyrs for Islam was distributed outside a Scarborough mosque by the alleged ringleader of a bomb plot against Toronto, the CBC reported Tuesday night.
In recent days several accounts have been raised of al-Qaeda propaganda DVDs being distributed by Fahim Ahmad, just weeks prior to the 21-year-old's June 2 arrest on allegations that he is the leader of a group of 16 homegrown terrorism suspects.
The recruitment video with English subtitles shows Osama bin Laden urging Muslims to fight Jews and Americans, and also scoffs at Saudi princes for shaking hands with U.S. President George W. Bush and his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The video also pays homage to several al-Qaeda “martyrs,” including the 19, Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers, as well as a lesser-known figure: Canadian Abdul Rahman Jabarah, a St. Catharines, Ont., youth who was killed in 2004 as a fugitive in Saudi Arabia after being implicated in an al-Qaeda bomb plot.
The imam of the Scarborough mosque in question said he had no knowledge of the any DVD distribution by Mr. Ahmad. The cleric added he is not responsible for what people distribute outside the mosque.
“How can I control the parking lot?” said Aly Hindy of the Salaheddin Islamic Centre last night. (The mosque is named for the great 12th Century Muslim warrior Saladin, who violently ousted the Crusaders from Jerusalem.)
However, a DVD praising the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001 would not have been popular at the mosque, Mr. Hindy said, as very few of his congregants actually believe that al-Qaeda is responsible for the deaths of 3,000 people killed in the United States that day.
“This has become like the Holocaust; we have to believe in it otherwise we go to jail,” Mr. Hindy told The Globe and Mail. “Most of the people don't believe that Sept. 11 was done by Muslims. ... most of them believe this was something done to create all this war.”
The imam said his mosque sanctions the sale of certain books and DVDs inside the mosque, including videos alleging that the 9/11 attacks were “a cover up.”
Mr. Ahmad has been described as the charismatic ringleader of a group of Toronto-area suspects, who convinced the others to join in a jihadist conspiracy.
The plot allegedly involved gun smuggling, recruitment, and training, before moving onto a conspiracy to detonate a series of fertilizer-based truck bombs against the Toronto Stock Exchange, a Canadian Forces target, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's Toronto offices. |
