Momin Khawaja

Mohammad Momin Khawaja (born April 14, 1979, Ottawa) is a Canadian found guilty of involvement in a plot to plant fertilizer bombs in the United Kingdom; while working as a software engineer under contract to the Foreign Affairs department in 2004 became the first person charged and found guilty under the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act following the proof that he communicated with British Islamists plotting a bomb attack. On March 12, 2009, Khawaja was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison and was eligible for parole five years into the prison term. On December 17, 2010, Khawaja's sentence was increased to life imprisonment by the Ontario Court of Appeals.

Born to Pakistani immigrants Azra and Mahboob who had moved to Canada in 1967, Khawaja lived in Saudi Arabia with his family (ages 9–14), before moving back to Ottawa, where he attended Sir Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School and graduated in January 1998.

Following graduation, he entered a 3-year computer program at Algonquin College, and became more religious and began teaching youth at the Cumberland mosque. His April 2001 graduation led to a placement in the Gatineau office of HRDC.

In January 2002, Khawaja took a 3-month trip to stay with his uncle in Pakistan while looking for a potential wife. It was later alleged that this trip had been meant to join the Taliban. Upon returning unsuccessful, he took a job as a contracted software developer for the Department of Foreign Affairs.

In summer 2003, the 24-year-old Khawaja began visiting paintball and pellet gun ranges with friends, signing in at the desk with pseudonyms. One friend, Younes Lasfar, got Khawaja to store two rifles and some ammunition at his house, and Khawaja complies, storing them under his bed. In July, he is alleged to have attended a four-day training camp in Pakistan's FATA region, along with Omar Khyam.

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