terrorism

9/11 in focus: For five men, tragedy remains over photo of 9/11’s first casualty

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Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Friday, September 2, 2011 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

NEW YORK — John Maguire still has the shirt.

Its blue fabric is laced with pale 10-year-old dust, and torn in the back where he was peppered with debris as he struggled to help carry the dead weight of a stranger he felt driven to assist.

“When the picture was out there, I figured maybe I’d hang on to this just as a memento. … It’s hard to throw something away that has that much history attached to it.

“It probably isn’t safe,” to keep that dust around, he acknowledges. “But one day, I’ll show my son.”

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‘Eight years of inaction and failure’

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Thursday, July 15, 2010 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Few people would want Jeffrey Colwell’s job.

The 44-year-old Marine colonel, career officer and father of three boys was tapped earlier this year to lead the defence team for terrorism suspects being tried at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals. That puts him in charge of the dozens of lawyers representing the most notorious prisoners in the world, in the most notorious and controversial prison in the world.

This week was Col. Colwell’s first taste of Omar Khadr’s case, at a truncated and chaotic pretrial hearing for the Canadian charged with murder and conspiracy to engage in terrorism.

And he loves the gig.

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Khadr’s move throws his hearings into doubt

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Monday, July 12, 2010 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL STATION, CUBA — In a putty-coloured air-traffic-centre-turned-courtroom Monday morning, the fate of Omar Khadr’s military trial, and the evidence the prosecution can present, will be up to Omar Khadr and his judge.

Military Justice Colonel Patrick Parrish will call on the Canadian charged with terrorism to confirm a statement he submitted Wednesday firing the American lawyers who have been conducting his defence at the military tribunal here.

That could leave the 23-year-old, who was 15 and severely wounded when U.S. forces apprehended him in Afghanistan and charged him with murder and supporting terrorism, to fend for himself in court.

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Foiled attack leaves airport chaos in its wake

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Monday, December 28, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

International airports were scrambling yesterday to tighten security on U.S. flights, causing passenger chaos on the busiest travel day of the year, in the wake of Christmas Day’s foiled attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane.

U.S. President Barack Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, ordered a review of security protocols and the no-fly list to determine how a man with explosives strapped to his body boarded a flight weeks after the man’s father contacted U.S. authorities to warn them of his son’s growing radicalism.

Jammed airports were a scene of bedlam yesterday as travellers were left waiting in line for hours and rushing to make alternative plans as a slate of ramped-up security measures disrupted connecting flights and slowed departures to a crawl.

But nothing better demonstrated the heightened anxiety in the skies than a case of airsickness that became a national security incident.

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Tab to keep Khadr out of Canada: $1.3-million and counting

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Friday, October 30, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

The federal government has racked up a tab of more than $1.3-million in legal fees in its continuing bid to keep Canadian Omar Khadr out of the country. And as its latest appeal of a judge’s order to repatriate the Toronto-born Mr. Khadr is set to go to court next month, the bills are likely to keep piling up.

Mr. Khadr, who was 15 when he was detained after a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan, has been held in Guantanamo Bay ever since on five charges, the most serious of which is for the killing of U.S. Sergeant Chris Speer.

In a written statement released earlier this week, the Justice Department stated it has spent a total of $1,335,342.37 on legal fees in relation to Mr. Khadr’s case.

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Suspect in N.Y. terror plot has Canadian connection

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Saturday, September 26, 2009 – Globe and Mail
PAUL KORING, COLIN FREEZE AND ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

WASHINGTON and TORONTO — Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan accused of plotting to plant terrorist bombs in New York, travelled back and forth to Canada and Pakistan, U.S. government prosecutors said yesterday.

The Globe and Mail has confirmed that Mr. Zazi travelled to Mississauga.

“Yeah, it’s the same guy,” said Maimoona Zazi, his aunt by marriage, who said she watched Mr. Zazi, a Denver bus driver, on television as federal marshals escorted him to a court appearance.

Last night, CSIS agents were knocking on the doors of homes of Mr. Zazi’s relatives in Mississauga, even as the government was refusing to say if its security forces were involved in the case.

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