Like many other Mississauga couples, she and her husband, Abdul Qayyum Jamal, were experts at tag-teaming to keep up with the demands of a bustling household and the needs of their four young children.
In the mornings, while she massaged each of their sons, all under 7, he would bathe each boy before heading for work as a school bus driver. The couple always shared household chores such as cleaning, cooking and laundry. But when it came to shopping, that was Jamal’s domain – after all, he was the one who took the time to clip coupons.
That average suburban existence crashed to a halt on June 2, 2006.
A police tactical unit burst into the family’s Mississauga home with weapons drawn, sending the shrieking children scurrying for cover and unleashing a wave of dread over MacAulay Jamal because her husband was suspected of being part of a home-grown terror cell.
Now, MacAulay Jamal is essentially a single mother, struggling to eke out a living on welfare and donations from the Muslim community while her husband, the family breadwinner, languishes in solitary confinement. Jamal and most of his co-accused are at Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton, awaiting trial on terror-related charges.
Prosecutors, however, will paint a very different picture of the man, a Wahhabist with anti-Western views. In 2005, before a rapt audience at the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre – a storefront prayer room in a Meadowvale strip mall where the 44-year-old worked as a caretaker and preached to teens on the side – Jamal was about to introduce Streetsville MP Wajid Khan.
Instead, he introduced his own radical views, telling the crowd Canadian soldiers were raping Muslim women in Afghanistan. Khan voiced his opposition and is not the only one to have spoken out against Jamal in recent years.
This morning, the case against Jamal and his co-accused will continue to take form as they appear in a Brampton court for the start of a preliminary hearing, scheduled to last until the end of the summer.
“It’s been a tremendous struggle,” MacAulay Jamal said. “Even without this case, life would be hard as a single mom of four. But then there’s the added stress of going to the courthouse, meeting the lawyer and the jail visits.”
Those visits have been the only opportunity for the boys to speak with their father over a jailhouse phone, while seated on opposite sides of a window.
“Now I’m doing everything myself, it’s like I'm constantly in emergency mode, crisis mode, just managing,” she said. “I’ve had to give up a lot just to cope – there are days when the homework doesn’t get done, when the kids don’t go to school and when I don’t cook.”
In the weeks after the arrests, she worried about a public backlash that could turn violent.
Although her fears have largely subsided, she still hasn’t removed the planks of wood that partially board up a front window, and continues to sleep with a meat cleaver in between her mattresses.
What hasn't diminished is the “feeling of nausea and dread,” each time she thinks of June 2 – a feeling that surfaced on the weekend and was likely felt by family and friends of all the men arrested in Canada’s largest terrorism investigation.
Jamal was among 13 men and four youths arrested in a massive police sweep involving more than 400 officers from across Ontario. The men, mostly in their 20s, were alleged to be part of an Al Qaeda-inspired cell plotting to bomb several targets such as the Toronto Stock Exchange building and Toronto offices of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which are adjacent to the CN Tower. Two months later, an 18th suspect was arrested.
Charges against them include participating in or contributing to the activity of a terrorist group, including training and recruitment; providing or making available property for terrorist purposes; and the commission of indictable offences, including firearms and explosives offences, for the benefit of or in association with a terrorist group.
It will be months, perhaps years, before the case gets to trial, but there has already been a preliminary hearing for the young offenders – at the end of which, charges were stayed against one of them. A publication ban prohibits reporting any of the court evidence. However, much information was made public before the ban was issued.
It is alleged that in 2004, Canada’s spy service began monitoring fundamentalist Internet sites and their users, homing in on a group espousing anti-Western views. Two men who worshipped together at the Meadowvale mosque, in particular, piqued their interest: Fahim Ahmad, 22, and his friend, Zakaria Amara, 21, of Mississauga. By late 2005, the RCMP had launched its own investigation.
Mubin Shaikh, a well-known member of Toronto’s Muslim community, has gone public with his role as a police agent who infiltrated the alleged cell. Shaikh, who is expected to be a key witness for the prosecution, has admitted that in December of 2005 he helped lead what police allege was a “training camp,” where men reportedly played paintball games, trained for an attack and made a jihadist video imitating warfare.
According to the Crown’s synopsis, which was made public by a defence lawyer, the alleged terror plot was dubbed Operation Badr.
It included storming the Parliament Buildings and beheading politicians until their demands were met that Canada pull out of Afghanistan and release Muslim prisoners from Canadian jails.
By mid-March of 2006, the group had reportedly split after Ahmad and Amara disagreed on tactics – the former is alleged to have preferred the idea of shooting sprees, whereas the latter favoured truck bombings.
Plans were underway by the spring to procure ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be used to make bombs, according to the synopsis.
A second police agent, whose identity has never been made public, reportedly acted as the supplier.
On June 2, the RCMP’s anti-terrorism task force deployed officers on two fronts: a major undercover operation to deliver three tonnes of ammonium nitrate and a massive police raid that netted the 17 arrests.
The father of one of the accused, Tariq Abdelhaleem, doubts the two police moles were passive observers, but rather took instructions from the agencies to entrap the young men and encourage the alleged crime.
One of the accused is Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, is an unmarried computer programmer who emigrated from Egypt at age 10 with his father, Tariq.
“These guys spent two years talking and nothing happened,” said Tariq. “And then these two spies appear and things begin to happen.
“The whole case that the RCMP and CSIS have put together is a mockery – there’s no substance,” said Tariq, an engineer who moved to Canada 20 years ago.
“These guys are innocent,” he said of son Shareef and his co-accused. “The truth will come out eventually, but only after they’ve spent years in jail and wasted years of their lives.”
