Federal prosecutors say a British Columbia man has pleaded guilty to two terrorism offences after he stole a small plane on Vancouver Island last July, triggering a security incident at Vancouver airport that spurred NORAD to scramble fighter jets.<\/p>\n
The Public Prosecution Services of Canada says Shaheer Cassim pleaded guilty in a Richmond, B.C., court on Tuesday to charges of hijacking an aircraft and interfering with the operation of Vancouver International Airport.<\/p>\n
The service says the charges \u201calso constitute terrorist activities,\u201d according to Canada\u2019s Criminal Code, and Cassim is due back in court at the end of May to schedule a sentencing hearing.<\/p>\n
Cassim posted on social media the day before the hijacking that he was a \u201cmessenger of Allah\u201d sent to save humanity from climate change, and police said at the time that the accused had an \u201cideological motive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Images posted on social media captured the moments of Cassim\u2019s arrest on a runway at the airport after he landed the Cessna aircraft, which had been taken from the Victoria Flying Club in Sidney, B.C.<\/p>\n
Cassim was once employed by a small airline on Vancouver Island called KD Air, and the former owners, Diana and Lars Banke, said in an interview at the time that Cassim was a highly intelligent and talented pilot who believed the world was coming to an end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal prosecutors say a British Columbia man has pleaded guilty to two terrorism offences after he stole a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-591182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}