2011-12-15
By Michele Mandel
Imagine the horrific explosion that ripped apart the London Underground in 2005 — and now almost double it.
That’s the scope of potential damage Byron Sonne could have unleashed from the material discovered in his Forest Hill home before the G20 Summit, according to the homemade explosives expert testifying at his trial.
And Dr. John Anderson doesn’t buy that Sonne, 39, was just a hobbyist who liked making crystals and building rockets. After looking at the myriad of chemicals, lab devices and contraptions seized from his multi-million dollar home, the Crown expert came to only one conclusion.
“While I haven’t seen any evidence that something explosive was made,” he said, “I can think of no other reason than to make at some point an improvised explosive device.”
The longest-held detainee from the Toronto G20 arrests — he was imprisoned for 11 months before finally being released on bail in May — Sonne has pleaded not guilty to four charges of possessing explosive substances and one of counselling others to commit mischief.
Until the scientist’s shocking testimony, we were ready to believe Sonne’s protestations that he was just a geek unfairly caught up in a G20 dragnet looking for terrorists in all the wrong places.
But after a day spent in the often confusing organic chemistry class conducted in court Wednesday by the Crown’s military expert on improvised explosive devices, we aren’t so sure.
And we can now understand why red flags were waving everywhere.
Anderson was asked to examine a long list of items seized by police from Sonne’s former matrimonial home just after his arrest on June 22, 2010. In his alphabet soup of neatly arranged chemicals stored in the garage, furnace room and basement lab, there were two large cans of acetone, a 4 litre jug of methyl hydrate, bottles of muriatic acid, hydrogen peroxide, jars of hexamine, potassium nitrate, ammonium nitrate, potassium permanganate – the stuff used by the airline underwear bomber – and aluminum powder.
Alone, he said, these chemicals may be harmless, but combined, Sonne’s vast amount of ingredients could have made five explosive devices of one kilo each. Asked by prosecutor Liz Nadeau for an idea of what that would mean in terms of explosive power, Anderson said between two and three kilos were used in the London terror bombings that killed 52 and injured 700.
Even just one kilo of detonated explosive material, he explained, would be devastating.
“In a crowded area, it would cause significant damage and injury,” Anderson said. “It would blow apart the back of a bus if the package was in the back.”
And it’s not rocket science.
As the group of high school boys paying rapt attention could probably attest, these court proceedings weren’t telling them anything new: a simple Google search of “making bombs” delivers 96,800,000 results.
“They’re all over the Internet,”Anderson said of the recipes. “You just have to type in the right words.”
He admitted that some of the potential bomb-making ingredients look like innocuous, everyday items – from almond flour to sugar to vegetable oil and steel wool. “That’s the difficulty,” he conceded. “It can be ordinary kitchen stuff.”
But Anderson argued that other items found at Sonne’s home have few other applications – such as a contraption called an electrochemical cell which was used to turn potassium chloride into potassium chlorate. “Potassium chlorate is a component of homemade explosives,” Anderson explained. “It’s a restricted material.”
Police also found Sonne had bought “Ragnar’s Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives” from amazon.com and Anderson said there was a “significant” correlation of what he read in the book and the evidence seized at Sonne’s home.
Anticipating the defence’s cross-examination, the Crown attorney then asked whether the cocktail of chemicals found could have been used innocently by someone making model rocket fuel.
Anderson admitted that rocketry is not among his many areas of expertise. “I tend to blow things up not to launch things,” he said with a laugh. “That’s my job.”
And deciding whether Sonne is a would-be terrorist or a mad scientist is the difficult task of Justice Nancy Spies.
Cross-examination of the chemical expert will continue Thursday.