LILLEY: Man who dined with bin Laden nabbed in Montreal terror bust

Article content

He allegedly said he knew how to make bombs and he wanted to kill a lot of people – that’s what police claim after arresting Mohammed Abdullah Warsame in Montreal.

The 51 year-old trained in the terror camps of Afghanistan 25 years ago and ate with Osama bin Laden, he pleaded guilty to providing material support to al-Qaida in an American court in 2009, now he’s charged with uttering threats after saying he wanted to kill a bunch of people.

The accused may have been living in a homeless shelter, but given his past, we can’t take alleged threats like this lightly – especially not in the current climate.

Warsame was born in Somalia but came to Canada in 1989. He had an arranged marriage to a Somali woman living in Minneapolis in 1995 and, while mostly living in Toronto, began to spend time in the United States.

“By the defendant’s admission, in or about early 2000, he became interested in the ‘utopian’ Muslim society that had been created in Afghanistan,” an affidavit used in his trial stated.

“Thereafter, in approximately March 2000, the defendant quit his job and left his residence in Canada and his family, still in Minneapolis, and traveled to Pakistan with the intention of entering and residing in Afghanistan.”

That’s where he met bin Laden, that’s where he learned to make bombs – by his own admission – and that’s where he made al-Qaida connections that he kept up after he came back to Canada and then the United States.

This shouldn’t be a shock to anyone given Canada’s long history with terrorism of all kinds.

We’ve had our share of jihadis looking to make a name for themselves over the past decades. The Toronto 18, Momin Khwaja, Omar Khadr, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the many people who looked to leave Canada and go join ISIS or other terror groups over the last 25 years.

Now though, we’re in a different scenario, especially after the recent shooting in Washington, D.C. and the Molotov cocktail attacks in Boulder, Colorado. The question that I keep asking is when will one of those attacks happen here?

Were the threats allegedly made by Warsame a general attack against the West or was it more specific against Montreal’s significant Jewish community?

At this point, we don’t know. But it also doesn’t really matter, because most of the people who hate Jews enough to carry out an attack on that community, also hate Western civilization in the same way and want to see its downfall.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

This is why anyone who supports or enjoys living in an advanced liberal Western democracy should be supporting their local Jewish community and, by extension, the ongoing survival of Israel as a sovereign state. The people who want to bring harm to Israel, and to the Jewish community in Canada, also want to bring harm to you.

Since news broke of Warsame’s arrest, people have asked me how a man with these activities and a conviction for terror in the United States could be allowed into Canada. It’s simple really, he came in 1989, was granted citizenship a few years later, and our security services never picked up on his terror-related activities.

It wasn’t until he was in the U.S. that the Americans began asking questions.

When he was freed from jail in 2010, he was deported from the U.S. to Canada. In hindsight, our security services should have picked up his activities, perhaps even alerted officials before he became a citizen.

We are too trusting though, smugly convinced that no one wants to attack us. Sadly, it will take an attack being successful and not just being threatened to change this.

blilley@postmedia.com