Born in 1982, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah is a Kuwaiti-born Canadian citizen from St. Catherines, Ontario who was implicated in an Al Qaeda terrorist plot to blow up Western embassies in Singapore. Known by the code name “Sammy,” the Arab-Canadian was sent by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the suspected planners of the 9/11 tragedy, to Southeast Asia to scout out targets for the terrorist organization in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

Jabarah, who attended a Catholic high school in St. Catherines, became involved with Al Qaeda after going to Pakistan in 1999 to pursue Islamic studies. Traveling on a Canadian passport, Jabarah arrived in Southeast Asia in September 2001. After his scouting mission, during which he ruled out an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Manila, he became the ringleader of a plot to blow up the American, Israeli, British and Australian embassies in Singapore — according to Heng-Chen Lee, Singapore’s ambassador to the United States.

The capture of notes and a tape in an Al Qaeda leader’s house in Afghanistan alerted western authorities to the plot, described as the terrorist organization’s most significant operation since 9/11. But before Al Qaeda could blow up its targets with the loss of hundreds of innocent lives, about a dozen of the plotters were arrested in Singapore, preventing the planned calamity.

Jabarah, however, managed to escape the dragnet and made his way to the Gulf state of Oman where authorities apprehended him. He then returned voluntarily to Canada, where the Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS – Canada’s CIA) took charge of him. When in CSIS’s hands, Jabarah agreed in May 2001, again voluntarily, to cross the border at Niagara Falls into the United States after signing a form waiving his legal rights.

Held incommunicado in a Brooklyn military facility, Jabarah cooperated with American authorities, providing information about Al Qaeda operations; he was given access to a lawyer, his family, and Canadian consular officials. Yet Canadian leftists argued that because no legal counsel was present when Jabarah signed his waiver form, his “rights” had been violated and his detention was illegal.

This profile was adapted from the article “Canadian Fifth Column,” written by Stephen Brown and published by FrontPageMagazine.com on August 20, 2002.