In 2004, an Ottawa man helped to build a bomb that was being assembled in hopes of blowing up a packed nightclub in Britain. When he was caught by the Mounties on the cusp of his 25th birthday, he became notorious as the first al-Qaeda-inspired extremist convicted in Canada.

Momin Khawaja's crime had once been unheard of in Canada. Now, terrorism is a charge laid relatively routinely. At 37 years old, he is a prisoner of Millhaven Institution, kept in its maximum-security wing and he has spent years secluded from the wider world.

But now Mr. Khawaja is writing that he wants to become engaged. "My Future Miss: … I'm interested in finding a girl I may marry," he has posted on an Internet site. He adds that "I have a life sentence, but I won't be in jail forever."

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The personal ad has been posted on Canadian Inmates Connect.com, a site that emerged as controversial a few years ago after sex killer Luka Magnotta used it to look for prospective partners.

Mr. Khawaja may be seeking a love match, but he is glossing over some details about his own past.

"I've never killed an innocent human being or harmed women and children in any way," he writes. While he admits that he is doing time for terrorism, he says he had his reasons. "My offences stem from moral and financial support of the anti-Western occupation insurgency in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan."

Contacted by telephone, Mr. Khawaja told The Globe and Mail that he had an intermediary post a profile he put on the Internet last summer. He has had a pen pal or two since, but no serious romantic prospects have emerged.

But he is undaunted. "I have turned 37 … but my heart and mind still feel like I'm young," he said.

He said he likes his chances because he has been out to improve himself. For example, he is taking science classes from Laurentian University. He also said he is studying religion more deeply. "I memorized the entire Koran in Arabic and its recitation," he said during the interview. "And, apart from that, I've studied Arabic etymology and morphology."

He insisted that correctional officials and prison-approved preachers have been teaching him what they call a "counternarrative." That's basically the difference between a fanatical version of Islam and a well-intentioned one where "one can be a productive member of society in line with Canadian values," he said.

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Besides, he said, he really has no idea what terrorists are thinking these days.

"I know and understand a lot of these groups, such as ISIS, are using radical extremist ideology," he said. But he added that the group has no appeal for him and that its propaganda would be completely unfamiliar to him.

Back then, he was a young software engineer who fixed computers for the federal government's foreign service bureaucracy, after he had grown up in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans playing street hockey.

He took to corresponding by e-mail with twentysomething Muslims in Britain who were also of Pakistani heritage. Outraged by the U.S.-led military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the British suspects and Mr. Khawaja journeyed together to their families' homeland. They enlisted in a terrorist training camp in the remote regions of Pakistan and returned home intent on striking a blow against the West.

Scotland Yard spotted the British cell starting to assemble a bomb made up of 600 kilograms of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer. Mr. Khawaja popped into the frame after a flight to Heathrow Airport, where he was met by the British ringleader, to whom he showed pictures of a prototype detonator he had built.

Arrested by the RCMP after returning to Canada, Mr. Khawaja went on trial for wanting to use his device – which he had dubbed "the Hi-Fi Digimonster – to help the British cell remotely set off explosions.

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The evidence showed that the intended targets would have probably been inside a shopping mall, or a packed nightclub, in London. One conspirator was caught on a wiretap saying the nightclub was a good target because "no one can even turn around and say, 'Oh, they were innocent, these slags dancing around …'"

The British conspirators were caught red-handed building the bomb.

Mr. Khawaja insisted that no one ever clued him in about specific targets. He said he only ever envisioned bombs going off in Afghanistan. "There is no chance that, if I had known for sure, with certainty, it would be used in the streets of Britain, that I would have ever supplied it to them."

Mr. Khawaja spent years warehoused in Canada's version of a supermax prison, Quebec's Special Handling Unit, where human contact – even hugging a family member – is mostly forbidden. This made moving to Millhaven last year feel liberating for him. "Having open visits with my family, sitting at a table with my mother and father, … these are opportunities I didn't have," he said.

His horizons expanding, he decided to post the personal ad. He still likes his chances of finding love.

"If you have any female colleagues that you think would be interested, … they can write to me," he said as the phone conversation drew to a close. "… I'm not looking for specifically a person who is Muslim."

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His personal ad states that women who frequent nightclubs need not apply. " I don't really like girls who party, club, drink and/or sleep around. They're not my type," it says.