Montreal man pleads guilty to threatening transit bombing
An unhoused man with al-Qaida training admitted to threatening attacks on the metro and Passport Canada office.
Mohamed Abdullah Warsame pleaded guilty to threatening to blow up Montreal's metro system and a Passport Canada office, court documents show.
Warsame, a Canadian citizen of Somali origin, told a social worker at the Old Brewery homeless shelter that he wanted to kill a million people by detonating bombs on trains or subways. He also made a bomb threat against the Passport Canada office while detained.
The guilty pleas carry weight given Warsame's history. He previously pleaded guilty in Minnesota in 2009 to providing material support to al-Qaeda and traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to train at al-Qaeda camps, where he met Osama bin Laden.
His lawyer, Leonard Waxman, noted that Warsame is homeless and suffers from mental health issues. Montreal police initially referred him to mental health services before the RCMP arrested him in June 2025 from a psychiatric hospital ward.
The case will return to court in September for sentencing. The guilty pleas resolve the immediate charges but raise questions about how the city balances security concerns with the mental health crisis among its unhoused population.