Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh pleaded guilty on Wednesday in a Canadian terror plot, the Ottawa Citizen reports.
In 2009, Alizadeh smuggled 56 circuit boards from a training camp in Afghanistan into Canada. The circuit boards were meant to trigger remote bombs.
With credit for the time served since his arrest, Alizadeh’s sentence for possessing explosives with an intent to injure works out to a maximum of 18 years. He will not be eligible for parole for nine years.
One of Alizadeh’s conspirators, Misbahuddin Ahmed is awaiting sentencing "after a jury found him guilty in July of conspiring to facilitate a terrorist activity and participating in the activities of a terrorist group," according to the Ottawa Citizen. Another conspirator was found not guilty of conspiring to commit terrorism
Defence lawyer Leo Russomanno said his client "grew up in the midst of war" and witnessed Saddam Hussein’s chemical attacks on the Kurds. "What’s tragic is that Mr. Alizadeh came to Canada not as a religious fundamentalist," Russomanno told the court. "(He) came to Canada for a better life."
In 2009, however, he was drawn back to war, travelling to Iran and then Afghanistan for two months of training by an "expert bomb maker" known as Westa Omar, who was involved in the preparation of IEDs for use against coalition forces from Canada, the U.S. and other nations.
After returning to Canada with his smuggled cache of circuit boards and how-to guides, he stayed in email contact with a man known as Mansoor Al Baloosh who facilitated the travel of foreigners to Pakistan and Afghanistan for terrorist training, court was told. He also communicated with Kurdish insurgents loosely aligned with the Taliban to fight the coalition, and with his brother, Rizgar, described as a member of a terrorist group in Iran.