Bomb ingredients discovered in closet, trial told

RCMP found materials, instructions in homes of pair facing terror charges

In Sabrine Djermane’s apartment, national security investigators say they found instructions detailing how to make a homemade bomb.

In El Mahdi Jamali’s bedroom at his family’s home, it was explained in court on Monday, they found some of the materials believed to be required to assemble the device: a box of assorted hardware nails, two nine-volt batteries, four AA batteries, a tube of Super Glue and a roll of duct tape.

The items were found inside a Dollarama bag stored in a white Armani Express shopping bag stuffed in the bottom corner of Jamali’s closet.

Accompanying the materials was a receipt, dated Feb. 4, 2015, showing they were purchased at the same time as other items that weren’t found: four boxes of wooden matches, a mesh filter, coffee filters and a clock.

Handwritten notes detailing the general law of gases were also found in the white bag, RCMP investigator Oldrine Jules testified on Monday.

Jamali, 20, and Sabrine Djermane, 21, are on trial at the Montreal courthouse for terror-related charges. The couple faces four charges related to their alleged attempt to leave Canada to join the terrorist group ISIL in Syria and an alleged attempt to build a bomb to commit a terrorist act in Canada. They were arrested in 2015 and have been detained ever since.

Other items found in Jamali’s room, Jules testified, included a clipping from a newspaper about the pro-ISIL group Cybercaliphate on his desk. In a garbage bin beside his bed was a newspaper article about a cyber attack on French television network TV5Monde and an ad for a conference being given in Montreal titled Flee to Allah!

The jury has already heard how investigators found a blue file folder holding a document labelled “How to fabricate a bomb” in Djermane’s apartment.

At the beginning of the trial, the jury was told the handwritten instructions are a “word-for-word” copy of one the terrorist group alQaida had previously published in a propaganda magazine.

Defence lawyers repeatedly asked RCMP investigators why they felt it was important to document the items found in the Dollarama bag if they were there to look for potential evidence that the couple was trying to leave the country to head to Syria.

Rodney Pierre, an RCMP investigator with its Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, explained that as the raid at Jamali’s home began, officers got word of the bomb instructions found at Djermane’s apartment.

Investigators were then told to keep an eye out for anything that could be used to build a pressurecooker bomb similar to the ones used in the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, where three people were killed and hundreds of others were injured.

The trial continues at the Montreal courthouse on Tuesday.