Toronto 18 ringleader confesses to 9/11-style bomb plot - thestar.com
Only one man knew all the details of a deadly explosives plot designed to cripple the economy and unleash mass carnage, terror and destruction in downtown Toronto.
That was Zakaria Amara.
On Thursday, the 24-year-old Mississauga man, regarded as one of the linchpins of the so-called Toronto 18, pleaded guilty in a Brampton court.
It was Amara who built the remote-controlled detonators by hand and made numerous treks to a local library to research ways to procure ammonium nitrate.
And he mustered $4,000 in cash to pay for three tonnes of the fertilizer, earmarked for truck bombs.
Members of the Toronto 18 planned to use three U-Haul vans filled with fertilizer bombs. One parked outside the Toronto Stock Exchange would carry at least two tonnes, enough to bring down the building and three surrounding blocks. Another truck would be parked near the Front St. offices of Canada's spy agency. Glass would shatter into the streets, cars would flip and roads would be torn apart.
And the third bomb would go off at a military base somewhere along Highway 401, between Toronto and Ottawa. To maximize the destruction, Amara wanted to place metal chips inside the bombs.