BRAMPTON, Canada — Some of the 17 men and youths arrested in a suspected terrorist plot had planned to storm the nation's Parliament, take politicians hostage and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper unless their demands for a withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan and release of Muslim prisoners were met, prosecutors allege.
The accusations, delivered Tuesday to several of the defendants' attorneys in a one-page investigation summary, include no evidence to substantiate the charges, said the attorney for Steven Vikash Chand, 25.
"There's an allegation, apparently, that my client personally indicated that he wanted to behead the prime minister of Canada," attorney Gary Batasar said of the synopsis, which he said he had received minutes before the proceedings.
Batasar complained that he had not been allowed to meet privately with Chand, and later said to reporters outside the courthouse, "This is not Guantanamo, this is Toronto, Canada."
In his comments before the judge, Batasar said the prosecution contended that the defendants planned to invade the Parliament building in Ottawa and take hostages to demand that Canadian forces leave Afghanistan, where about 2,300 of the troops serve under international mandate with the Kabul government's consent. The defendants, prosecutors say, also planned to demand the release of unspecified Muslim prisoners and to bomb Parliament and decapitate Harper and other political leaders if their demands were rejected.
The prosecution synopsis also mentions plans to seize or blow up the CBC broadcasting headquarters in Toronto, the attorney said.
Harper brushed off the purported plot against him, joking to reporters as he left the lower house, "I can live with these threats as long as they're not from my caucus."
As Batasar and two other defense lawyers protested the conditions of their clients' detention, Chand and Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, surveyed the courtroom and smirked as the charges were read against them. Their hands were cuffed and each was shackled to a third defendant, an 18-year-old who was a juvenile at the time of the alleged crimes and appeared confused over the proceedings.
A chaotic parade of handcuffed and manacled defendants in white T-shirts and Velcro-fastened gray trousers was escorted into the small, packed courtroom of Judge Maurice Hudson at the Ontario Court of Justice in this Toronto suburb. Outside, hundreds of reporters swarmed lawyers and defendants' relatives, eager for details of a case that has jolted Canadians and led to criticism of the nation's liberal immigration policies.
