OTTAWA - Momin Khawaja is a dangerous zealot who supplied equipment and financing to Islamic extremists with deadly intent, says the chief federal prosecutor at his trial.
"What he actually did was set himself up as a quartermaster of terrorism," Crown attorney David McKercher said Wednesday.
Khawaja faces seven charges under the Anti-Terrorism Act, including a key contention that he built a remote-control device for a British group planning bomb attacks in and around London.
His co-conspirators -- five of whom were convicted by a London jury last year -- hadn't selected final targets when police and security officers broke up their plot. But they were considering attacks on a nightclub, shopping centre and gas and electric facilities.
Had the plan come to fruition it would have resulted in "disastrously" extensive loss of life and damage to property, said McKercher.
Using some of the strongest language he's employed since the trial began, the federal lawyer painted Khawaja as a "zealot with deadly intentions."
He has acknowledged that the Ottawa software designer didn't know all the details of the British plot. But that doesn't make him any less guilty, McKercher told Justice Douglas Rutherford, who is hearing the case without a jury.
"Momin Khawaja was prepared to provide and metaphorically pull the trigger of a very powerful weapon," said McKercher.
Aside from the British plot, Khawaja faces accusations of facilitating and financing terrorism, taking terrorist training, and making a house owned by his family in Pakistan available for terrorist use.
Defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon says the London plotters kept Khawaja in the dark about their true intentions, and he thought any bomb attacks would be staged against western forces in Afghanistan.
McKercher says there's strong evidence Khawaja knew the bombings were being planned for Britain -- but even if he was aiming at Afghanistan he's still guilty of terrorism.
Rutherford is currently considering a defence motion to quash the charges against Khawaja on grounds that the Crown hasn't produced enough evidence to sustain them.
Prosecutors are urging him to reject the motion. If the judge does so, it will force Greenspon to continue with his defence case and decide whether to call Khawaja as a witness on his own behalf -- a move that would open him to cross-examination by the prosecution.
