Ruminations: Unlicenced to Practise Terrorism, but Licensed to Practise Law

"Saad was the only one with whom a relationship was built."
"Not many who get convicted with such long sentences are able to bounce back. He didn't give up on his education ... he was moving forward with his life."
"He started rebuilding his life one small block at a time."
RCMP Inspector Marwan Zogheib

"The plot was a terrible crime, disgusting, [a] grave mistake [for a] misguided cause. I have to live with that guilt and shame."
"The year I left my parents' house for university, I was introduced to a more hateful ideology that promoted violence as a means to justify political ends."
"The more I interacted with this group and consumed the extremist literature provided to me, the faster my downhill spiral was into extremism."
"I am grateful the Royal Canadian Mounted Police intervened when it did."
Saad Gaya, one of eighteen Muslim extremists, dubbed the Toronto 18 terrorist group

Toronto 18 members Saad Gaya and Saad Khalid lie on the ground during their arrest on June 2, 2006 on charges of taking part a terrorist plot, in this image taken from a video. The two men both pleaded guilty after their arrest. Photo by National Post file

Saad Gaya was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2009 when at trial he pleaded guilty to having committed an offence in league with a terrorist group. He was paroled after serving close to ten years. Out of prison, he continued his education, attending Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, graduating with a degree in law. He works as an articling student at the present time, at a Toronto law firm.

Currently, the Law Society of Ontario's Tribunal is holding hearings to come to a decision whether this man, a convicted terrorist sentenced to a lengthy prison term for a capital offense should qualify as an individual "of good character" -- a requirement to practise law in Ontario. Conventionally, anyone who has a criminal conviction against their name may be considered for such qualification, but it would be highly unusual for someone convicted of terrorism to present as a potential law practitioner.

In this man's case, there is no shortage of people coming forward to support his being granted a licence to practise law. Included among them his former parole officer, professors at York University, where he studied, his wife who is a lawyer, and an imam known to work at rehabilitating extremist Islamists. This is a man, mature enough as a university student at the time, to make reasoned decisions reflecting law and order and morality and who chose terrorism.

He took part in an al-Qaeda-inspired plot to bomb the Toronto Stock Exchange, Canada's spy agency, a military base, and to target and behead the prime minister of the day, among others.His lawyers speak movingly of their client's 'remorse and rehabilitation'. RCMP Insp.Zogheib was with the national security team that followed the plots in 2006, helping to investigate, arrest and prosecute Gaya and his associates in terrorism.

Gaya impressed Insp.Zogheib by volunteering to work with the RCMP in his show of remorse, while renouncing his extremist past. He is said to have turned to working with the RCMP on ways to counter extremist recruitment, and to help in the training of officers of the law with respect to the Islamist extremist element within society. He testified on Gaya's behalf in the hope that as a police officer his sentiments would carry weight.

It was March of 2006 when Gaya became a member of a jihadist plan to wreak chaos in Canada through terrorist activities targeting government and its linked departments and personnel. At the time, he was a student in Hamilton at McMaster University. Police had already infiltrated and knew of the plot, thanks to a well-paid volunteer informant. Gaya was tasked with the job of locating facilities that the group could work out of in planning their attacks.

He, along with the other 17 that comprised the terrorist group were arrested at a time they were unloading bomb-making materials at a storage facility. The society was advocating neither for nor against his application at the hearing where the law society's counsel, Elaine Strosberg, said that it made note of issues to be considered by the panel.

Gaya, she said, while engaged in a plot that would have been the cause of death and destruction, was also "a rare instant (sic) of prolonged and continuous commitment to remorse".The tribunal, she said, must weigh the details involved against the fact that a terrorism conviction against a working lawyer would, without doubt, lead to licence revocation.