OTTAWA (AFP) ? A "Toronto 18" member whom prosecutors say was motivated by greed, not ideology, was sentenced on Friday to life in prison for his role in a plot to bomb Canada's main stock exchange in 2006.
The Ontario Superior Court sentenced Shareef Abdelhaleem, 35, to life imprisonment for his role in the plot and participation in a terrorist group, prosecutors said in a statement.
He was convicted last year after being arrested along with co-conspirators in a police sting operation in 2006.
Prosecutors said he aimed to profit from blowing up the Toronto Stock Exchange by short-selling stocks before the bombings and reap a windfall that could be used to fund more terror attacks abroad.
While his co-conspirators were impressionable young men with modest means, bent on destruction and mayhem for "religiously-inspired political purposes," prosecutors alleged Abdelhaleem was motivated primarily by financial gain.
The plan was "to affect the economy, to make it lose half a trillion dollars," said court documents.
His lawyer argued Abdelhaleem had been "dragged in" by a former friend to the conspiracy aimed at provoking a Canadian troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But the judge ruled Abdelhaleem "took up the cause with full knowledge of what he was involved in" and in many instances even "advanced the bomb plot."
The Toronto 18 were arrested when members of the group sought to purchase three tonnes of the bomb-making ingredient ammonium nitrate from undercover police officers, who had switched it with an inert substance.
Eleven were convicted of plotting to bomb the Toronto Stock Exchange, Canada's spy agency offices and a military base using fertilizer explosives packed in rented trucks. Seven others were released.
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