Zak and Michelle

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There was this

great fear that there was going to be another attack.

There was, of course, 9-11, then the anthrax scare, but everyone was worried about the next big one.

In 2005, Michelle Shepard was a national security reporter for the Toronto Star.

She started hearing from sources that Canadian authorities were keeping an eye on a group of young Muslim men in Toronto.

And then I started hearing stories about a northern training camp, and these young boys were up in the woods north of Toronto training for an attack.

It all kind of sounded quite far-fetched.

And to be honest, I think my editors thought I was just being a bit

conspiratorial and there wasn't really a story there.

But I kept saying, you know, something's going on and sort of putting the pieces together.

Michelle says she talked to a source with the police to see if they knew anything.

They actually laughed.

They said, oh, that sounds pretty funny.

A bunch of guys running around the woods with guns.

I think I would have known about it.

And what I found out much later was that call kind of put off alarm bells because

at that point,

there was an investigation going on.

I was getting accurate information.

And they were very worried that a journalist knew anything about this.

In June of 2006, Michelle was hosting a barbecue at her house.

My husband actually works at the Toronto Star, and we used to have an annual barbecue in her backyard for all the interns.

We have a small house in Toronto, small backyard, and it was packed with,

gosh, it was probably about 60 of us, editors, photographers, reporters, the interns.

But it was about 8 o'clock, I guess, and my phone rang

and it was somebody, a source saying it's going down.

She heard that police were starting to make arrests.

They literally had the newsroom in the backyard.

So I

caught the eye of the photo editor who was tending the barbecue and he knew what was going on and another editor and we just dispatched a bunch of reporters, bunch of photographers, and we went and blanketed the city to try and figure out what was happening.

And then I went into the newsroom to pull the story together.

In the end, 18 people were arrested under the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act for planning to set off bombs in Toronto.

They became known as the Toronto 18.

The youngest was 15.

Police had been investigating them for about two years.

They'd been using wiretaps and undercover informants.

Did it feel scary?

Did it feel like something could happen at any moment?

Even though everyone had been worried after 9-11 there would be another attack, it still seems sort of incredible that there were 18 people planning to blow up downtown.

And the plan would have been catastrophic.

I mean,

it would have...

totally crumpled our, it would have been our 9-11.

And tell me a little bit about who these 18 men were.

You know, it's hard.

You can't really put them in one category.

Every single suspect, you know, had a different backstory, but in very general terms,

they were young Muslim boys.

Some were, you know, young, were juveniles, and others were older.

They...

majority, you know, they were kind of middle class,

all Canadian, but, you know, quite generally, they were angry with Canada's involvement in Afghanistan

and

they were, you know, felt the backlash of Islamophobia in the community.

What was the press coverage like at the time?

Was this all over, all day, every day?

All over.

And

I remember the morning that they first came to court, and there were snipers on the roof.

There had to be, I think every media outlet in the U.S.

was there.

It was huge.

It was, it was a,

um,

I mean, I'm trying to think if we've had a bigger case here in Toronto.

And I'm, I, I don't think we, we have in the time that I've been reporting.

One newspaper ran the headline, Threat on the home front.

Another article read, a Canadian jihad is apparently underway.

In court and subsequent days, anybody who walked into the courthouse who wore a hijab or had a long beard, had a microphone shoved in their mouth.

The various Muslim communities in Toronto were kind of made to answer for this case.

And now looking back at some of the pieces that were written, they're just so blatantly Islamophobic.

There was one, one,

a colleague at another paper,

wrote something to the effect of, you know, all the suspects had a first name, Mohammed, second name, Mohammed, last name, Muhammad.

Much of the coverage focused on two men that were considered the group's leaders.

One was Fahim Ahmad.

He was 21 years old when he was arrested.

He pled guilty to participating in a terrorist group and instructing others to carry out activities for that group.

He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

The other was a 20-year-old named Zachariah Amara.

The Toronto Star ran a picture of him on the front page and reported that he'd bought three tons of ammonium nitrate to make bombs.

He pled guilty to two charges of terrorism.

In 2010, he was sentenced to life in prison.

Well, let's just start with you introducing yourself.

That's probably the most difficult question.

How do you do that

with a past like mine?

So do you just stick to first name, last name?

Do you get it straight into

the crime which defines you?

My name is Zachary Amara and I'm a returning citizen to society after spending nearly 17 years in prison on a life sentence.

I'm much more than that, but for now,

that's how, I guess,

that's the most honest way to introduce myself without hiding.

I'm Phoebe Judge.

This is Criminal.

We'll be right back.

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In 2023, Zachary Amara decided to send an email to Michelle Shepherd.

Why did you want to speak to her?

Um,

you know, she

she was the one who broke our story.

And I

you know, I couldn't

I couldn't talk to every single member of the public,

but at least I could reach out to as many people as I could.

Michelle Shepard remembers when she first read Zach's message.

And it started something to the effect of, I hope this doesn't alarm you, which is always alarming, right?

And

he just said, I, you know, I, I don't know if you remember me.

This is Zachary Amara, and I just served my time in Adam Parole.

And I don't know why I'm reaching out to you.

I don't want a story,

but I've just been sort of thinking

about you and the coverage, and

I'm just saying hi, basically.

I was surprised he reached out to me.

I

kind of had assumed that

he would want nothing to do with journalists and

would have felt that the coverage of the trial had really hurt him.

That was just my impression.

I was just surprised that he wanted to reach out to me.

So I wrote him back and I said, I'd be happy to meet for a coffee if you want.

We went to a coffee shop on one of the university campuses and I was running late and he got there before me and then he

sent me a text saying, I've got us a spot by the window.

I'm just going to go pray BRB.

Be right back.

So I went in and I got a coffee and he comes running up to me and he's kind of looking panicked.

He's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.

What did you think when you saw, you know, a knapsack by a table by the window with a with a terrorism convict?

And I was like, oh, God.

And I laughed.

I kind of liked that.

I mean, dark, dark humor, of course.

And I just laughed.

I said, well, I'm obviously, you know, the worst national security reporter because the thought didn't even cross my mind.

But hi.

And

anyway, we got our coffees and we sat down.

And gosh, I think we chatted for like two hours.

I don't know, maybe even longer.

You know, I was, of course, skeptical and dubious the first time I met him.

I thought, well, is he really?

Has he changed?

Zakamara's family moved to Canada from Cyprus when he was around 12 years old.

I do have a diary that I kept that I discovered, you know, later on.

But in it, you know, I talk about coming to Canada and you could tell I'm excited.

I liked it.

It was definitely an adjustment.

The first time he saw snow in Canada, it reminded him of Home Alone.

Zach struggled at school, but he eventually started making friends.

I ended up finding my identity in my Muslim faith.

And after that, I became kind of confident

and I was well adjusted, I would

In high school, he joined the Muslim Student Association, and he became close with two other students, Fahim Ahmad and Saad Khalid.

They spent a lot of time together.

Sometimes the three of them would write rap songs that they'd post online.

Both Fahim and Saad were arrested as part of the Toronto 18.

Zach says that things started to change for him after September 11th.

He was 16 years old at at the time.

He remembers he was in chemistry class when he learned that hijackers had flown a plane into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

In October, the United States began bombing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

I still remember President Bush's speech: you know, you're either with us or with the terrorists.

When you heavily rely on just one identity, like in the case of the Muslim identity, and me specifically,

and

I look more like the people you're bombing,

therefore I must be with them.

I was upset,

like I took it as an attack against my identity and the people that I was more identifying with more and more as you know, the aftermath of 9-11.

And so I was kind of very upset about it

and angry.

What were other people around you at the mosque or at home saying about it?

I mean, were you all on the same page, or did you find yourself being more angry about it than others you were around?

There was

a general anger, but I think it's because the Muslim community

felt the backlash of 9-11 and many people blamed them for it.

And so as a minority,

you know, they're very afraid.

You know, they were on the defensive.

But I, as a young man, you know, didn't understand that and I was upset about it.

The Canadian Islamic Congress reported a spike in hate crimes in Canada after September 11th.

Zach says he and his friends started reading and posting on radicalist websites.

By 2005, he'd stopped going to the movies and watching TV.

He'd gotten married at 18, and he'd dropped out of college and was working at a gas station.

Zach says that he was worried about the war in Afghanistan and how many people were being killed.

He says he started to feel that it was up to him to keep Muslims from being hurt in the war.

So the process of radicalization and isolation and just meeting with like-minded people who had the same thoughts

took place over years.

And you just more and more isolate as we know, like

as you grow more extreme or more radicalized, you tend to isolate within the same silo

and kind of want to hear the same beliefs reaffirmed.

Zach and his friend Fahim Ahmad started planning an attack.

They recruited friends.

And Zach looked for a place outside the city where he and Fahim could hold a training camp.

They picked a place about two hours north of Toronto.

They met the recruits there in December.

Zach and Fahim told them they'd be practicing military maneuvers.

They used paintball guns and one real gun for target practice in the woods.

They took videos of themselves.

Most of them slept in their cars.

They went to a local Tim Horton's to use the bathroom.

Locals noticed the men at the grocery store.

They were usually wearing camouflage.

Neighbors reported hearing gunfire in the woods.

But police didn't do anything because the men were already being watched closely.

One of the men in the training camp was working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as an undercover agent.

We'll be right back.

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In 2006, Zakamara started planning to make three bombs.

He would fill U-Haul trucks with fertilizer and detonators and park them outside the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Canadian intelligence headquarters, and a military base in Ontario.

He looked up how to build a fertilizer bomb at the local library, the same kind of bomb that Timothy McVeigh used to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Was there ever a moment in the planning process where you thought to yourself,

what am I doing?

Yeah,

definitely.

I remember just, you know, parking, I think it was somewhere off the highway, and just breaking down in tears and praying and just not knowing what I was doing.

And

I've had like

a number of those situations that happen,

but I just you just kept doubling down.

I just kept doubling down and just keep

moving forward.

The best way that I can describe the way this

plot transpired

is it was kind of when you get on a treadmill and it just keeps going faster and faster and you can't get off.

Again,

you know, I am responsible for what happened.

And honestly, I hold myself responsible more than anyone else in the case.

And I believe if I wasn't around, probably none of this would have happened at all.

And probably nobody would have been arrested.

But that's how it happened.

It's just

an escalation, a doubling down, and then just being locked in a certain mental state where you just can't get off.

Zach started to build a detonator that could be activated using a remote.

He figured out how much fertilizer he would need, and then he bought fertilizer from a friend of a friend, who later turned out to be another undercover informant.

When the informant made the delivery on June 2nd, 2006, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police began making arrests.

When I was arrested, I was relieved.

It was, I know it sounds strange,

but

I was relieved to finally be off this path.

After his arrest, Zach was held in jail for three years.

At first, he was put in solitary confinement, but eventually he was allowed into the general population.

Once I got out of solitary confinement,

I was in the position where I had to keep

defending, right?

When you're looking at someone who tells you, oh, my brother, you know, works there, or my sister walks by that place every day, it's very difficult to defend.

On January 14th, 2010, he went to a sentencing hearing.

Zach read a letter addressed to his fellow Canadians.

Quote,

I am certain that many, if not all of you, will never forgive me for my actions.

I only wrote these words to simply let you know of how regretful and sorry I feel.

As for the Muslims amongst you, I have an additional comment to make.

I cannot imagine the type of embarrassment or anxiety you must have gone through in the days following my arrest.

I am sure many of you received unwelcome attention and felt hopeless in trying to explain that the actions of a few were not endorsed by the community.

Zach was sentenced to life in prison.

At first he was told he'd be going to a prison a couple of hours from Toronto.

He was relieved that it wouldn't be too hard for his family to visit.

But he says when he got into the transport van, he found out he was being taken somewhere else.

So I asked, you know, I yelled and I said, where are we going?

So another prisoner replied and he said, the shoe.

The shoe stands for the special handling unit.

So when he said that, that's when my stomach sunk

and I felt completely devastated because

the shoe is the most dangerous prison in Canada

and the shoe is in a different province.

So it will be way, it will be like eight hours away from my family.

Did anyone tell you why you were being sent there?

Initially They never told me I was going there.

In my case, they said we're going to assess you in the special handling unit, and after six months, we will determine whether, you know, you'll be sent to another lower security prison.

And that six months turned into six years.

In prison, Zach says the isolation started to make him feel paranoid.

He felt like he was being watched.

He accused another man of being an informant, and he attacked him.

He says his beliefs became more extreme than they'd been before his arrest.

He says he became obsessed with watching coverage of

He made maps of their locations based on the news, and he started to believe that ISIS was coming to rescue him.

But he says he also felt confused.

When he watched the news, he couldn't understand why ISIS and Al-Qaeda were fighting each other.

If you guys are part of the same ideology, then why are you fighting each other?

So that was the first

question.

And then after that,

the brutality.

It was very difficult.

He saw stories about ISIS attacking mosques and churches and reports about hostages being beheaded.

He says it was hard for him to dismiss the number of people being killed.

He started to become depressed.

He later wrote that he was afraid that if he didn't believe in what ISIS was doing, it would mean that he had, quote, thrown my entire life away and brought suffering upon my my family for no good cause.

And then he heard that ISIS had beheaded an American journalist named Jim Foley.

Um, that was difficult because, you know, he looked like a good man.

Um,

and then there was this other, um, aid worker that was killed in Syria.

You know,

so and then there was the burning of the Jordanian pilot.

So,

it was just difficult to accept that this is the people I looked up to, and that this was the right thing to do.

You know, and I struggled with trying to make sense of what they were doing.

I may not know what you know, what's right at that time, but I know this is wrong, and I have to be honest with myself

in 2021 zachamara applied for parole but the parole board denied his application

they wrote that they believed he had made an effort to rehabilitate himself but they were unable to tell how much of a risk zach still posed to the public they said there were currently no programs in prison that would be able to assess zach's rehabilitation

reporter michelle shepard says fahim Ahmad, Zach's former friend and one of the Toronto 18, was told the same thing.

He was serving a 16-year sentence.

He kept going up for parole, and the parole board would say, you know, well, you haven't completed these de-radicalization programs.

And he would say, those don't exist, and they didn't exist in prison.

And so it was this sort of, you know, almost Kafka process.

A friend of Zach's put him in touch with a counterviolent extremism program, and they let him do phone sessions with a counselor.

Zach also asked if the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, would interview him to assess whether he was still a risk.

The word I used is, I said, I want you to interrogate me and to

assess whether I really changed or not.

And if I haven't, then, you know, you can keep me in prison for the rest of my life.

The RCMP interviewed him about his childhood, his crimes, and his time in prison.

Afterwards, they reported that Zach was no longer radicalized, and that, quote, the change in your values, attitudes, and belief appears to be long-term.

In 2022, Zach was granted parole.

He'd been in prison for almost 17 years.

I don't think I believed it until I actually stepped out and I saw my sister.

You know, when that day came, I was always, maybe this is not happening, maybe they'll change their mind.

And there was always the chance that something would change.

Zach was one of the last of the Toronto 18 to be paroled.

He's now been out of prison for three years.

It's

initially,

you know, obviously when anything good, something that such a change happens, such a release, relief,

there is you know enthusiasm

happiness euphoria excitement energy wanting to catch up to move as fast as you can possibly move

and then

so that's kind of the initial stage

and then after that there's that stage you know the the shao shank redemption stage you know when you remember that old man

who gets out from prison after such a long time and he can't find his place in society and eventually commits suicide.

So

that was like a stage I had to go through

recently, probably in my third year, end of second year, third year.

That was very, very difficult.

But I got out of it.

I can explain how, but it's going to sound like a self-help book.

Today, Zach isn't allowed to use a smartphone and has to live in a halfway house.

He has a job fixing watches, and he started taking writing classes.

Michelle and Zach have stayed in touch.

Do you think he'll ever not be known as a terrorist?

That is a good question.

I hope so.

I certainly hope so um

you know he's just i guess coming up to 40 so he's still got a long life ahead uh

there is another of the accused of the 18 who's actually a criminal lawyer now and doing really well

so

you know and there's a couple others that were

uh

youths at the time who I understand are doing pretty well.

So, yeah, I think, I think given enough time,

he could easily get there.

But it's hard, you know?

One Google search and

your name comes up.

So it's going to be difficult.

And I think he's probably a little tired of this conversation too.

You know, that he doesn't want to always be known

as the you know, the terror convict or even the redeemed terrorist,

the repentant terrorist.

Like, he doesn't necessarily want that label either.

I think he just wants to move on.

There are some people who will always think of you as a criminal and a terrorist.

What would you say to someone like that, someone who

doesn't think

that you can change or have changed?

I mean,

I usually don't engage in

trying to persuade someone who has strong views.

I'm the type of person that if I sense someone has strong views and they're not willing to be persuaded, I just don't

argue with them.

I just accept that this is the strong position that they have.

You know, I'm not sure I'll be ever be able to move past this.

All I can do is try.

Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me.

Nidia Wilson is our senior producer.

Katie Bishop is our supervising producer.

Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Segico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinnane.

Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti.

Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal.

You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.

And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter.

Michelle Shepard wrote about Zach Amara for The Walverse magazine.

We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus.

You can listen to Criminal, This Is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads.

Plus, you'll get bonus episodes.

These are special episodes of me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohr talking about everything from how we make our episodes to the crime stories that caught our attention that week to things we've been enjoying lately.

To learn more, go to thisiscriminal.com/slash plus.

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We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/slash criminal podcast.

Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

I'm Phoebe Judge.

This is Criminal.

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