Jury selected as terror trial set to begin Wednesday

Case against young Muslim couple expected to see 10 weeks of testimony

The trial of a young couple charged with a series of terrorism-related offences is set to begin Wednesday morning at the Montreal courthouse.

Jury section in the trial of Sabrine Djermane and El Mahdi Jamali, both 20, took less than a day on Tuesday and the presiding judge in the case, Superior Court Justice Marc David, advised the jurors to expect to hear evidence over the course of the next 10 weeks. The Crown is expected to present 31 witnesses in all.

“The trial will be in this room and in this room only,” David told the 14 jurors who were selected Tuesday.

He said this while instructing the jury to not read any media coverage of the trial and to avoid any references to it on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

“(The courtroom) will be a bubble of reality for you as far as this case is concerned. You will live this trial in this room only.”

Two of the 14 jurors will be excused before the trial begins on Wednesday.

Djermane and Jamali were arrested in 2015 and have been detained since then. The two accused watched the jury selection from behind a specially designed prisoner’s dock that keeps them sealed off behind thick windows.

The pair are charged with attempting to leave Canada with the goal of committing a crime in another country, being in possession of an explosive substance, facilitating a terrorist activity and committing a criminal act for the benefit or under the direction of a terrorist group by having an explosive substance under their control.

During jury selection, David asked each potential juror an unusual question: “Considering that Mr. Jamali and Mrs. Djermane are charged with terrorist offences, is your capacity to judge the evidence without taking a side, prejudice and partiality affected by the fact the accused are Arabic and of the Muslim religion?”

The first three potential jurors said they would have no trouble being impartial and, within a matter of minutes, one of the three was selected to be part of the jury.

The fourth candidate asked to be exempt from the trial for health, professional and religious reasons. He said he is a Muslim “and I might know people who know the accused. This makes me anxious,” the man said while his voice shook. David agreed to exempt the man.

Another candidate asked to be exempt because his uncle was killed in Afghanistan by a terrorist group.

“Hearing today what the accused are charged with brought back bad memories,” the man said. David also agreed to exempt the man.

In another somewhat unusual step, David selected two women from the jury pool and asked them to size up the answers other candidates gave to a set of questions posed to them by the judge. The women would announce whether they considered the candidate to be partial or impartial. This gave the two women the ability to reject potential jurors before lawyers on either side of the case were able to.