A 20-year-old Ottawa man arrested -- but never charged -- in connection with a terror probe, was released on bail Friday morning on unrelated domestic assault charges.
Awso Peshdary had been released on bail after his initial arrest, before being immediately rearrested, last weekend. Police linked him to their year-long investigation of an alleged homegrown terror plot, but only charged him with assault and uttering threats.
On Friday, he was granted bail on $8,000, paid for by his family. He was released on the following conditions: he will reside with his parents, he will have no contact with his wife or young child and cannot apply for a passport.
Peshdary is accused of shoving and threatening his wife during incidents in April and August. He faces two counts of uttering threats and two counts of domestic assault.
He made no comment as he left the courthouse but his lawyer, Richard Morris, said that his client intends to fight the charges.
"With respect to the charges that he does face, the appropriate forum for clearing his name will be in a court, and we're going to proceed forward and do that," Morris told reporters.
"With respect to the allegations that brought him to the RCMP's attention, he doesn't have to clear his name. At this point, as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to that. Otherwise charges would have been laid."
Morris said the allegations of domestic assault came to the attention of police through audio surveillance of Peshdary's home, and he suggested that the Mounties had not been taking the case against his client seriously.
"If we operate on the assumption that the RCMP was listening to these taps . . . before the 27th of August, one has to question how real they thought the danger was if they chose not to intervene," he said.
"Either they thought there was no real danger or the RCMP chose to prefer their investigation to the safety of this complainant and her child."
Second hearing
Another man who was charged in the terror probe appeared briefly in court on Friday afternoon, by video link, to discuss his bail hearing.
Khurram Syed Sher, 28, of London, Ont., faces charges under the Anti-Terrorism Act. He is scheduled to appear in court again next Thursday.
Two Ottawa residents, 30-year-old Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh and 26-year-old Misbahuddin Ahmed, were also arrested and charged last week in an alleged terror scheme that police say reaches from Canada to Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.
Alizadeh and Ahmed will appear in court later this month.
Sher and Ahmed have been charged with conspiracy to facilitate terrorist activity. Alizadeh has been charged with conspiracy, committing an act for terrorism purposes and providing or making available property for terrorism purposes.
All three are Canadian citizens.
They were arrested after police seized more than 50 electronic circuit boards, alleging that the group intended to use them as remote detonators for explosive devices. Schematics, videos, terrorist literature and bomb-related documents were also allegedly seized.
Peshdary works at a call centre. The RCMP has released scant details about how he could be related to their terror probe.
But Ottawa defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon said that it's not unheard of for unrelated charges to be made during the course of a terrorism investigation.
"Inevitably the police are going to come across, not just the targets, but the people they associate with and the people that know them. They're going to come across their activities as well, and sometimes (they) will lead to these kinds of domestic charges," he said.
With a report from CTV Ottawa's Kate Eggins and files from The Canadian Press
