By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban

Mohamed Abdullah Warsame, who was connected with 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden, has now been charged with terrorism after being accused of uttering threats that could cause death or bodily harm.

The RCMP- Eastern Region announced that the accused “allegedly told a worker at the Old Brewery Mission that he intended to commit an attack with the goal of killing a large number of people.” The target has since been revealed to be public transit.

Now, Crown prosecutor Samuel Monfette-Tessier has upgraded the existing charge to terrorism, which according to the Criminal Code could potentially lead to a life sentence. The prosecutor has said he believes this is the first time the Criminal Code has been used in this way.

Warsame, a Canadian citizen of Somali descent, had been convicted in the United States in 2009, sentenced to 92 months in jail and then accepted back into Canada.

A judge, in early June, had ordered the accused to undergo 30 days of psychiatric examination at the Philippe-Pinel hospital to determine the extent of his criminal responsibility, but the defence asked that the results be sealed. Warsame was then transferred to Bordeaux and after that the Rivières des Prairies detention centre, sources told The Suburban.

As previously reported by The Suburban, according to the United States Department of Justice, Warsame was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to 92 months in jail and three years of supervised release in federal court in 2009 for “conspiring to provide material support and resources to al-Qaeda.”

Warsame had met Bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks. According to various sources, Warsame emigrated to Canada in 1989 and married an American woman from Minnesota in an arranged marriage, during which he still lived in Toronto and visited her periodically. He then went to Afghanistan in 2000, attracted by what he considered to be a utopian society n