A 17-year-old has been found guilty of conspiring to murder Jews in Ottawa, among other domestic terrorism charges, after an unusual one-day trial that preserves his rights to appeal.
The teen — inspired by ISIS and an unknown person who went by “Klm” and “Gh D” online — was planning to commit an attack sometime around Christmas 2023 using three pressure-cooker bombs, according to a 50-page agreed statement of facts filed in Superior Court by federal Crown prosecutors Wednesday.
He planned to pack the bombs with thousands of ball bearings “to maximize the death and injury caused by each,” and to strap one of them to himself to detonate at the end of his attack, the statement of facts reads.
“The specific location and targets of his plans shifted over time, but his overarching intention was to murder as many Jewish persons as possible in the attack,” the document adds.
CBC News successfully argued in court to access and report on the agreed statement of facts. It had not been read aloud in court, and lawyers for a co-accused teen in the case opposed the document’s release.
Neither teen’s name can be published due to a routine ban preventing the identities of charged youths from becoming public.
The teen pleaded not guilty to four of the seven charges he faced, and invited the judge to find him guilty. The unusual move is akin to the “no-contest” plea commonly heard in U.S. criminal courts. It means the teen accepts punishment without admitting guilt.
Carter then retired to read the lengthy facts. Later Wednesday afternoon he ruled that the Crown had proven the essential elements of the four charges beyond a reasonable doubt, and found the teen guilty of each of them.
The youth and his counsel are now free to appeal pre-trial rulings that didn’t go his way about whether or not evidence should have been excluded, as well as the findings of guilt.
A four-day sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date, and Federal Crown prosecutors Kelly Reitsma, Giuseppi Cipriano and Jonathan Thompson will also ask for the teen to be sentenced as an adult.
The youth has been held in custody without bail at a juvenile detention centre in Ottawa since he was arrested and charged in December 2023 by INSET, an RCMP-led team of law enforcement and intelligence partners that handles threats to national security.
The teen, represented by Michael Johnston and James Coulter, was found guilty of:
He was 15 at the time.
Prosecutors are asking for the remaining charges to be adjourned to the sentencing hearing. They don’t want these counts stayed because if the teen wins any future appeal, the Crown might not be able to resurrect them:
Two months after the first teen’s arrest, as the investigation progressed, INSET arrested and charged another 15-year-old Ottawa boy alleged to have acted as a co-conspirator.
He was granted bail under strict conditions this past October.
His trial is expected to begin Thursday before a different judge. Wednesday’s guilty findings against his alleged co-conspirator do not affect the presumption of innocence in the second teen’s case.
The teen whose trial starts Thursday is charged with:
