Couple were preparing to join ISIL, court hears
Prosecutor lays out timeline in couple’s alleged plan to join ISIL in Syria
The trial of two young Montrealers who are alleged to have made plans to leave Canada to join ISIL while also preparing to build a bomb began Wednesday at the Montreal courthouse.
Federal prosecutor Lyne Décarie did not mince words in her opening statement to the jury. She said the young couple — Sabrine Djermane, 21, and El Mahdi Jamali, 20, both students at Collège de Maisonneuve at the time of their arrests — were preparing to join the terrorist group in Syria and had booked tickets on a flight set to depart on May 1, 2015.
They couple had also ordered new passports after the parents of both decided to hide their passports from them.
Décarie told the jury that the key to the case is a timeline that began on April 10, 2015, when someone called the RCMP and said something that prompted the Mounties to investigate the pair.
Investigators met with the person who placed the call and then met immediately with Djermane, Décarie said.
Kevin Rouleau, an investigator with the RCMP, was the first witness called to testify on Wednesday.
He told the jury that he and a partner first approached Djermane by pretending to be searching for information about fellow students at her CEGEP who had left Canada to fight in Syria.
Initially, they did not say they were investigating concerns that she had her mind set on leaving as well.
“She was at ease with us. She was listening to what we said,” Rouleau said.
“We said we had information on young women who wanted to travel to Syria. We asked her if marriage was important to her and about religion.”
Before he left the condo Djermane and Jamali were living in at the time, on Aird St., Rouleau said he offered her his phone number in case she wanted to call him. He said that while Djermane took down his number he noticed a drawing — that he assumes she drew — of a female figure wearing a wedding dress.
The drawing was later seized, as was the piece of paper Djermane used to jot down Rouleau’s name and number. Rouleau said he realized later that, during their first conversation, Djermane had carefully noted every question he asked her.
Initially, Rouleau only referred to the person who made the first call to the RCMP in generic terms. He told the jury he referred to the source of the call as an anonymous person when he first met Djermane on April 10, 2015. But while he was cross-examined by Jamali’s lawyer, Tiago Murias, he reluctantly revealed that the person who made the first call to the RCMP was Djermane’s older sister, Fatiha.
The RCMP investigator elaborated that, as the investigation progressed, he learned that Djermane’s family was concerned because she had left home, to live in the condo on Aird St., and that her parents were so concerned they had kept her passport from her.
The RCMP later met with Jamali. By April 14, 2015, the RCMP had enough information to arrest both and to execute search warrants at the condo and at a residence where Jamali lived with his parents, Décarie said in her opening statement.
While executing those search warrants, the RCMP found handwritten instructions for creating a bomb. The writing matched that of one of the accused and was a “word for word” copy of instructions that had been written in a propaganda magazine published by the al- Qaida terrorist group.
The RCMP also found some of the materials that were listed in the recipe.
Décarie said the last witness to be called by the Crown in the 10-week trial will be an expert on jihad.
Décarie said the expert will analyze a video statement that was recorded by John Maguire, a Canadian who decided to fight for ISIL in Syria.
In the video, Maguire calls on fellow Canadians to either travel to Syria or to carry out terrorist acts at home.
“You either pack your bags, or prepare your explosive devices. You either purchase your airline ticket, or you sharpen your knife,” Décarie said while repeating quotes from Maguire’s video.
“They answered that call,” Décarie told the jury as she completed her opening statement.
Décarie advised the jury that because of the many witnesses involved in the trial, the narrative of the timeline will jump back and forth often. She said it will be like a film that uses the same narrative tricks.
“At the end of the film we understand what happened. The same will happen here,” she said.
Before Décarie delivered the opening statement, the accused pleaded not guilty to the four charges they face: 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.
The trial resumes Thursday.
We said we had information on young women who wanted to travel to Syria.