{"id":5756,"date":"2015-02-15T08:52:30","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T13:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5756"},"modified":"2015-02-15T08:52:30","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T13:52:30","slug":"prison-dispatches-from-the-war-on-terror-confessed-plotter-gives-insight-into-radicalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5756","title":{"rendered":"PRISON DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR ON TERROR: CONFESSED PLOTTER GIVES INSIGHT INTO RADICALIZATION"},"content":{"rendered":"

PRISON DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR ON TERROR: CONFESSED PLOTTER GIVES INSIGHT INTO RADICALIZATION<\/a><\/h3>\n

In 2006, 21-year-old Fahim Ahmad was\u00a0arrested<\/a>\u00a0and charged with<\/span>\u00a0leading\u00a0a group of young men who planned to bomb\u00a0power stations, take hostages and \u201cbehead politicians\u201d in order to compel the Canadian government to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. Ahmad was also accused of planning to travel abroad to join Islamist insurgents fighting in foreign conflicts.<\/p>\n

While the group he led\u00a0was described by authorities as \u201cAl-Qaeda inspired,\u201d it was not believed to have direct links to the group or any other designated terrorist organizations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Born in Afghanistan, Ahmad moved with his family to Canada at the age of 10, and became a naturalized citizen. He lived in the working-class inner suburbs of Toronto, where he married and had two children. At the time of his arrest in 2006, he was unemployed.<\/span><\/p>\n

After serving several years in\u00a0pre-trial custody, Ahmad<\/span>\u00a0pleaded guilty to terror charges in 2010 and was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment, minus credit for time served. \u00a0He is currently incarcerated at a facility outside Toronto, and is scheduled to be released in 2018.<\/p>\n

Speaking to\u00a0The Intercept<\/i>\u00a0from prison, Ahmad offered some insight into the process that led to his own radicalization.<\/span><\/p>\n

What started you down this\u00a0path of radicalism and\u00a0advocating violence?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t come from a bad place, originally. It came from a place of concern. At the time I started coming to these views, I was a teenager. It was 2002, 2003, the invasion of Iraq; it made it seem like there was really a war going on. It forced an identity check on me. At the time, you think by doing something like this you\u2019re doing something that\u2019ll in the end make a positive difference.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PRISON DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR ON TERROR: CONFESSED PLOTTER GIVES INSIGHT INTO RADICALIZATION In 2006, 21-year-old Fahim Ahmad was\u00a0arrested\u00a0and charged with\u00a0leading\u00a0a group of young men who planned to bomb\u00a0power stations, take hostages and \u201cbehead politicians\u201d in order to compel the Canadian government to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. Ahmad was also accused of planning to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[23,103,3589,3588,792,854,864],"class_list":["post-5756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-al-qaeda","tag-canada","tag-radicalism","tag-radicalization","tag-terror","tag-violence","tag-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5757,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5756\/revisions\/5757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}