BRAMPTON, Ont. - The terrorist mastermind behind a plot to cause untold deaths and destruction on Canadian soil stood in court Thursday to renounce the extremist views that once fuelled his chilling plans, saying he deserved nothing less than this country's "complete and absolute contempt."

Zakaria Amara, 24, a co-leader of the Toronto 18 plot to set off bombs outside the CSIS and Toronto Stock Exchange buildings in downtown Toronto and at a military base in Ontario, pleaded guilty in October.

At his sentencing hearing Thursday he read a letter to the judge and an open letter to Canadians, distancing himself from the extremist ideology that once consumed him and led him to direct a plot his own lawyer said would have resulted in a loss of life on an "unheard of scale."

"I have spent my entire life struggling to discover the truth and the reality of life," Amara said.

"But looking back retrospectively, I can also say that it is this same righteous struggle that led me down the road of extremism."

Amara promised in his letter to the judge that he will use his sentence to become a man of construction, instead of destruction.

"I promise that no matter how long it takes and how much it costs that I will produce actions that will hopefully outweigh the actions that I once took towards hurting others," he said.

"Give me a chance that one day I will be able to pay the moral debt I still owe."

Amara's wife also wrote a letter to the judge, talking about how because of her husband's "enormous mistake" she and their four-year-old daughter are paying a heavy price.

Amara burst into audible sobs, burying his face in his hands, wiping tears from his face then resting his head on his knees as his lawyer read aloud the letter describing how his wife is living in her parents' basement and going to school in the hopes of providing a future for their daughter, who prays for her dad to come home every night.

Amara said his extremist views persisted in the three years he spent in isolation in prison following his June 2006 arrest, calling the segregation "pretty much the antithesis to rehabilitation."

When released into the general prison population several months ago, he discussed his ideology with the other inmates and doubt began to grow about the views he had held to so staunchly.

"Despite their lack of education and `expertise,' their moral and logical arguments were like pick axes that chiselled away at my ideological walls," Amara said.

He befriended a Jewish inmate who told him that had they "been living in Palestine," they probably would have killed each other without realizing what good friends they would make. The person he said most influenced his reformation was a man who worked on Toronto's Bay Street and whose brothers worked in the very stock exchange tower Amara was intent on bombing.

"I have no excuses or explanations," Amara said to Canadians. "I deserve nothing less than your complete and absolute contempt."

To Muslims in particular he says he can't imagine the embarrassment suffered in the days following his arrest, and the gravity of what he did "makes any excuse or apology inappropriate."

The Crown is seeking a life sentence, whereas the defence is seeking a sentence of 18 to 20 years.

Defence lawyer Michael Lacy read out passages from a psychiatrist's report, which talks of Amara's willingness to change his attitudes and behaviours and the psychiatrist's belief that it is precisely Amara's desire to "discover a deeper truth" that will lead to his rehabilitation.

Amara and 17 other people, who have come to be known as the Toronto 18, were arrested in the summer of 2006.

Three other people pleaded guilty, a youth was found guilty, seven people had their charges dropped or stayed, one man is currently on trial and five others await trial.

Court was also told that Amara was a middle child who moved frequently between Jordan and Cyprus when he was a boy. His father -- a non-religious man who didn't support Amara's interest in Islamic study -- was frequently away during his formative years. The family moved to Canada in 1997 and his parents got an Islamic divorce in 2003.

From then on his father was largely out of the picture. After he was rejected from pursuing Islamic studies at a school in Saudi Arabia after high school, he married Nada Farooq, who was 17. Amara worked part-time and enrolled in Ryerson University, but dropped out so he could work full-time to provide for his wife and their young daughter.

The "daily drudgery" of Amara's work combined with his stunted intellectual development left the jihadi videos he had begun to watch as his only source of excitement, the psychiatrist's report said. Challenges with his marriage and supporting a young family, as well as his parents' second Islamic divorce contributed to the sense of isolation that Amara would later cite as a cause for his extremist views, the report said.