The Canadian Press Photo: Police transport Mohammed Momin Khawaja from the Ottawa courthouse back to the detention center following…

By Jim Brown, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Federal prosecutors are vowing to prove that an Ottawa software designer played a key role in a plot to sow death and destruction by blowing up a London night club, a suburban shopping centre and parts of the British electrical and gas grids.

The assertions came as Crown attorney David McKercher opened his case Monday against 29-year-old Momin Khawaja, who faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on seven terrorism-related charges.

“The aim was to cause death, injury and damage for religious and political purposes,” declared McKercher.

He noted that five co-conspirators already convicted in Britain had purchased 600 kilograms of fertilizer for use in homemade bombs.

If they were able to put all that material into a single explosive device, said McKercher, “the result would be massive destruction and loss of life.”

Even if they’d split up the explosives into smaller bombs, he added, that would only have spread the carnage to more locations.

Khawaja, sporting a neatly trimmed beard, white shirt and grey suit, sat impassively in the witness box as the proceedings unfolded. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Security at the downtown courthouse was tight, with police snipers on nearby rooftops as the defendant arrived to start the day. Inside the building, tactical officers with submachine guns stood guard and the courtroom door was ringed with a floor-to-ceiling wire fence.

In a two-hour opening statement, McKercher signalled that much of the evidence in the case will come from surveillance and electronic bugs planted by British police and security officers, who thwarted the plot before any damage could be done.

The prosecution will be buttressed by evidence gathered in Canada, including electronic detonator components, guns, ammunition and books on militant Islamic ideology seized when the RCMP raided the Khawaja family home in March 2004.

In addition, computer hard drives seized by the Mounties produced e-mail records of Khawaja’s contacts with his alleged collaborators in the U.K.

The Crown also has a star witness - 33-year-old Mohammed Junaid Babar, a one-time associate of the British plotters, now turned police informer.

Babar, who was born in Pakistan but raised in New York City, has pleaded guilty in the U.S. to charges of aiding al-Qaida and is awaiting sentencing. He testified at the earlier trial of Khawaja’s alleged co-conspirators in London last year, and is hoping for leniency on the American charges in return for his co-operation.

In his first day of testimony Monday, Babar wove a tale of international intrigue that included a failed plot by fellow Islamic extremists to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2002.

The plan foundered when one of the plotters was arrested and his colleagues ended up burying the firearms and grenades they’d stockpiled to avoid detection. There was no evidence to link Khawaja to the affair.

Babar testified that he first met the Ottawa man in Pakistan in early 2002. “Momin told me he had come to go and fight in Afghanistan,” he recounted.

But Babar said Khawaja never actually crossed the Pakistan border into Afghanistan, where the Taliban were then in disarray. Instead he went back to Canada, only to make another trip to Pakistan the next year.

Prosecutors allege that on the second trip Khawaja underwent training at a terrorist camp. But Babar’s testimony on the subject was cut short Monday when defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon raised objections about its reliability.

Greenspon contended that most of the knowledge Babar has about Khawaja is second-hand and ought to be excluded from the trial.

“The evidence is prejudicial and unfair,” Greenspon said later outside the courtroom. “Ninety-five per cent of Babar’s evidence against Mr. Khawaja is hearsay.”

Rutherford took the mater under advisement and promised a ruling for Tuesday.

Khawaja was the first person ever charged under Canada’s new Anti-Terrorism Act following the highly publicized RCMP raid on his home four years ago.

But the prosecution was delayed by pre-trial constitutional challenges to the law.

Greenspon won a partial victory in 2006 when Rutherford struck down a part of the law that defined terrorism as an offence motivated by political, religious or other ideological considerations.

The judge ruled those provisions violated the freedom of thought guaranteed by the Charter of Rights. But he simply severed the offending portions from the rest of the law and let the case proceed.

There was also pre-trial wrangling in Federal Court over disclosure of documents sought by Greenspon to help build his defence. Thousands of pages were released, but other material was withheld on national security grounds.

Courtesy of:http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080623/national/khawaja_trial