Jihad me at Hello

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 9:54 AM - 0 Comments

From the always-entertaining testimony of Mohammed Babar, at the Khawaja trial yesterday:

When the court reconvened, [prosecutor] Boutzouvis told Mr. Babar he had but one question that arose from the cross-examination.
He referred to a Dec. 30, 2003 e-mail between Mr. Babar and Mr. Khawaja’s ex-girlfriend that included the line “Please give my salaams to your father because he also a believer in my scams LOL.”
Mr. Boutzouvis then fired with the very last question for his star witness.
“Could you assist us with the meaning of LOL?”
“It’s laughing out loud. It’s short form…for laughing out loud,” Mr. Babar replied, characterizing it as a “half-hearted” comment.
“I’m sorry, did you say half-hearted?” asked Justice Rutherford.
“You know, light-hearted,” Mr. Babar corrected himself. “There’s nothing behind that remark.”

That’s from Laura Drake’s excellent trial blog

Finding Comedy in the Muslim World

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 11:43 PM - 0 Comments

For all the seriousness of the charges, the trial of Momin Khawaja has provided some moments of great hilarity. A lot of it comes from the attempts by the  Crown attorneys and Justice Rutherford to come to grips with the peculiar mix of hip-hop and jihad that is emerging from the emails of MMK to the main witness, Mohammed Babar.

Early in the day, Rutherford expressed a certain amount of confusion over the meaning of the word “nigga”:

After the e-mail was presented in court, Judge Douglas Rutherford noted that the references to niggas “seem to cover a broad ambit.”

Mr. Babar told the judge that it’s a slang word whose use is difficult to explain: “In one sense, niggas means everyone involved,” he testified. “But to understand which niggas are niggas, you have to know the people and understand from the email who he was referring to.”

The judge replied: “That clears up how unclear it is.”

While the defence does not question the authenticity of the emails, one possible point of  contention is over the meaning of some of the coded terms used. In his testimony  Babar gave his interpretation of the coded messages contained in the emails. For example, “porn vid” = terrorist training video, “Yahoodiland” = Israel. The day ended with this exchange, beginning with the reading of the quoted passage from a final email:

From Khawaja to Babar: “next time, nigga, I’ll make sure to get your Mountain Dew ahead of time. I’ll bring some in December. inshallah. Keep in touch. Yas.”
Asked by Crown attorney Bill Boutzouvis what ‘Mountain Dew’ means, the U.S.-raised Mr. Babar said it means Mountain Dew. “I like Mountain Dew,” he said, explaining it it wasn’t available in Pakistan.

I swear, these guys should be given their own talk show.

From Andrew Duffy

Down with the J

By Andrew Potter - Monday, June 23, 2008 at 10:19 PM - 0 Comments

The trial of Momin Khawaja started today, and it is shaping up to be far more important than the trial of the Toronto 18/11/4 that everyone the Toronto media is paying the most attention to. To begin with, unlike the wannabe Jihadis from Toronto, the people Khawaja is accused of consorting with are the real al-Qaeda deal. Indeed, five of his alleged co-conspirators, arrested in England in Operation Crevice the day after MMK was arrested by the RCMP here in Ottawa, have already been tried and convicted and will be spending the rest of their lives in British prison.

Khawaja is the first Canadian to be charged under Canada’s post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws, and it is a huge test of this country’s ability to prosecute accused terrorists. Note that his alleged co-conspirators in Britain have already been tried and convicted, after the longest criminal trial and longest jury deliberation in the country’s history.

But the Khwaja trial is also going to be great theatre. Over at the Citizen we have a great team covering the opening days of the trial, with Andrew Duffy and Ian MacLeod tag-teaming on webhits, colour, analysis, and newswraps. Here is the text of some emails between Khawaja and an alleged co-conspirator that were introduced today by federal Crown David McKercher, from Andrew Duffy’s webfile:

Subsequent e-mails to Mr. Khyam are spiced with hip hop style exchanges, such as: “How’s it’s goin’ niggas, everything OK?”

“Yeah, bro, got home safe.”

“How bout you niggas? Everything cool?”

It appears by March 19, 2004, however, that Mr. Khawaja may have known that the security forces were closing in the group.

Mr. Khyam said: “Bro, thing are bad. Be prepared, nigga.”

To be “down with the J” meant an individual was in support of Jihad, Mr. McKercher told court.

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READ: Today’s Citizen, where Wesley Wark weighs in with an excellent opinion piece laying out just what is at stake.