Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his regular weekly segment, Liedtke’s Got a Take!
Jon Liedtke criticizes the decision of The Parole Board of Canada to grant full parole to Toronto 18 ringleader Zakaria Amara, – citing his lack of extremist beliefs – arguing that prison behavior metrics fail to assess terrorism risks properly and advocating for revoking citizenship and deporting dual-citizen terrorists.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Here is the verbatim transcript of the audio recording:
Gene Valaitis: Liedtke’s Got a Take with Jon Liedtke. Jon, good morning and welcome to a brand new week.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Okay, so, um, people may remember a group called the, uh, uh, Toronto 18. Uh, it was a terror plot. Uh, the, uh, ringleader was a gentleman by the name of Zakaria Amara. So back on Friday, Jon, the Canadian Parole Board granted Amara full parole after declaring he no longer shows, and I quote, “any signs of holding extremist beliefs.” Now, here’s what I’m having a little problem with, Jon. How does a guy who methodically built bomb triggers and planned to detonated fertilizer bombs at the Toronto Stock Exchange, a Canadian Forces base, CSIS headquarters, and storm Parliament walk out as, I quote, “cured,” unquote?
Jon Liedtke: I mean, Gene, to say what were they thinking would assume thinking was involved. This is not a man who wandered into Home Depot, saw a pallet of fertilizer, and had a religious experience. He stopped because the RCMP showed up on the day that he took delivery of what was necessary for the bombs aimed at those, uh, locations that you just listed: Toronto Stock Exchange, CSIS, military base, and then storming Parliament. The parole board looked at the guy who did all of this, who ordered the fertilizer, who picked the targets, who helped recruit, and essentially said, well, he was respectful, he was polite, and he was quiet while he was in medium security, and he hasn’t blown anything up lately, so, all clear. They wrote that he no longer showed any signs of holding on to extremist beliefs, which is great, but I’d like to see the checklist that says “has not recently ordered 3 tons of fertilizer” as a negative mark on one of those checklists. I mean, full parole, life sentence still hanging there, conditions still in play, but the board has decided that the public can now share the residual risk. That’s the decision.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Well, you know, the defense always points out that nobody was killed because the RCMP caught him first, like you said. So from a legal and moral standpoint, why shouldn’t an attempted mass casualty plot be treated any differently than a completed attack when considering parole?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, I think that mass casualty plots that are stopped by law enforcement should be treated the exact same as ones that go through. The defense likes to note that nobody died because the police caught him first, which is true, but it’s also true that the only reason it stayed an attempt is that law enforcement did their job. He did all of the necessary, uh, pre-work to actually carry this out. He didn’t leave a step undone. So treating this as meaningfully less dangerous because law enforcement did their job is a strange standard. It’s like saying, “Sure, he pushed a piano off the roof, but you ducked, so really no harm done, no foul. Let’s get him a coffee.” I mean, from a risk perspective, completing every operational step short of the explosion carries the same intent. The public shouldn’t have to absorb any leftover risk just because the parole board here made a decision that, you know, some might say is incompetent.
Gene Valaitis: Well, as you pointed out, the parole board relied heavily on correctional reports, uh, which said he was polite, quiet, and cooperative during his years in medium security. What kind of a metric is that?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, it’s obscene. And, um, it should also note that, you know, that during the first number of years that he was in prison—I believe 20 years in total—he was not respectful, polite, or quiet. It took a while to get to whatever this, quote-unquote, deradicalized is. But at the end of the day, a polite terrorist is still a terrorist. The board noted that the correctional officers found him that, um, when he was in medium security, and that’s the evidence they weighed. But these risks tools were designed for a guy who steals a riding lawnmower and then gets better once he takes anger management classes. I mean, they’re not designed for someone whose own literature tells him to smile, keep his head down, and tell the parole officer whatever progressive things the parole officer wants to hear until the gates open. And I guess, you know, when the positive indicators are quiet, cooperative, and he took the process of deradicalization, you’re bringing a clipboard and gold star stickers to a counter-terrorism problem. The board’s own earlier decisions even note they didn’t have validated tools for this kind of risk, so they used the tools that they had on hand.
Gene Valaitis: Well, what kind of a message does releasing a senior terrorist ringleader send to prospective extremists who are sitting on the sidelines, like the anti-Semitic shooting we saw in Belleville?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, I think the message that it shows in releasing this person is that the message, you know, I think the message is not complicated. CSIS had said nearly one in ten of its terrorism investigations now involve a minor. We’ve had teenagers in Ottawa pressure-cooking bombs against Jews, ISIS-inspired cases throughout Canada, and a steady run of firebombings and shootings at synagogues and Jewish schools and community centers since October the 7th. And we know how small the Jewish population is. But I think broadly, the prospective extremists, especially the ones getting radicalized, can now look at a senior plotter who—who did all the necessary steps to carry out an attack and see that if you stay compliant, you can actually eventually walk out on full parole. Law enforcement has to be right every single time, but the board of—the parole board only has to be wrong once. Releasing senior plotters whose threat level is elevated, that’s a choice, and we’ll find out later whether or not it’s a good or a bad one.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. So he had his Canadian citizenship revoked back in 2015. Then for some unknown reason, Trudeau gave it back to him. So if the parole board model is completely broken for national security offenses, what do you think specific structural changes, uh, must a Canadian criminal justice system implement to fix this and fix it permanently?
Jon Liedtke: Naturalization comes with an oath and a pledge to the country, and Amara’s citizenship was revoked in 2015 under, uh, former Prime Minister Harper, um, the only person stripped under that provision, and only to have it restored two years later under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau under a policy decision. And the slogan that we heard from Trudeau: “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.” That works great in campaign ads, but it gets a little thinner when you apply it to dual nationals who plan to truck bomb the Toronto Stock Exchange, CSIS, and a military base, and storm Parliament. I mean, my view is that if a naturalized dual citizen commits high-level terrorism, revocation and removal should be on the table and should be, you know, just automatic, quite frankly. Canadian taxpayers should not be required to fund indefinite domestic supervision of someone who tried to blow up Canadian institutions when removal is legally available. The oath is not decorative.
Gene Valaitis: Another great take today. We’ll talk to you on Tuesday morning at 9:45.
Jon Liedtke: Thank you, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: There he goes. Jon Liedtke, Liedtke’s Got a Take.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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