The Toronto 18 11

The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente is worried (with good reason in my view--full text payers only):

It was almost two years ago when the world media swarmed to Toronto to cover the sensational arrest of 18 Muslim men charged with conspiring in a homegrown terror plot. Even at the time, some of the plotters' loose talk sounded like adolescent bravado. Storm the CBC? Now that will bring the infidels to their knees! Behead the Prime Minister? Yeah, sure, if they could figure out how to find Parliament Hill.

"I hope this case holds up," I muttered at the time. Otherwise, our law enforcers are going to look awfully stupid.

[...]

And so the Toronto 18 have dwindled to 11. Even so, the complex case is so bogged down in lawyers and procedure that no one dares predict when it will go to trial. Maybe this decade, maybe not. The British managed to try their airplane bomb-plot suspects in well under two years, but such speedy justice is evidently beyond our reach.

[...]

The stakes in the case of the (now) Toronto 11 could scarcely be higher. It's the biggest test to date of Canada's new anti-terror laws. It also tests the credibility of the police, the intelligence service and the prosecution, whose reputations will be hammered if (and this is a big if) it all falls through. Most of all, it will test the public's willingness to believe what our leaders tell us - that there really are bad guys among us who pose a mortal danger to our way of life, and that we can get them. If the rest of the case goes south, it would be a serious blow to our anti-terrorism efforts.

That's why the sooner we get answers, the better. But this is Canada - so don't hold your breath.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at April 17, 2008 02:54 PM