Man with al-Qaida ties who threatened to bomb subway pleads guilty in Montreal

The lawyer for a homeless man who once attended al-Qaida training camps says his client has pleaded guilty in Montreal to threatening to bomb public transit.

Leonard Waxman says Mohamed Abdullah Warsame has also acknowledged having called a Passport Canada office from detention and threatening to blow it up.

A joint statement of facts tabled in Quebec court says Warsame told a social worker at Montreal’s Old Brewery homeless shelter that he wanted to kill a million people by using bombs to blow up trains or subways.

The Somali-born Canadian citizen previously pleaded guilty in Minnesota in 2009 to providing material support to the terrorist organization al-Qaida.

According to his plea agreement in that case, he travelled to Afghanistan in 2000 to attend al-Qaida training camps, where he met the organization’s founder, Osama bin Laden.

Waxman says his client is homeless and mentally ill, noting that Montreal police initially directed him to mental health services before he was arrested by RCMP at a hospital psychiatric ward in June 2025.

The case returns to court in September.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 29, 2026.

— With a file from The Associated Press