Ismael Habib sentenced to nine years
Will serve half of his term before parole eligibility
While saying Ismael Habib was obviously desperate to leave Canada to join ISIL in Syria, a Quebec Court judge sentenced the Montreal man to an overall prison term of nine years on Friday.
The sentence is precisely what Crown prosecutor Lyne Décarie requested during sentence arguments held at the Montreal courthouse in August.
Judge Serge Délisle also ordered Habib has to serve at least half his sentence before he becomes eligible for parole. Under normal circumstances, offenders serving time in federal penitentiaries in Canada are eligible for parole after having served one-third of their sentence.
Habib was sentenced to an eightyear prison term for attempting to leave Canada to join the terrorist group in Syria. He was also sentenced to a one-year additional term for using false documents in an attempt to obtain a passport.
The sentences have to be served consecutively.
Factoring in time served, Habib will serve a little more than six and a half years. Délisle said one of the mitigating factors in reaching his decision is Habib has had no news of his wife and two children (who were believed to be in ISIL-held territory in Syria in 2016) for the past 15 months and he has to live with the consequences of sending them to Syria.
Habib appeared calm as Delisle read from his 10-page decision. He sat in the prisoner’s dock with his chin on his hands and his expression changed somewhat when it became apparent Delisle fully agreed with the Crown’s suggestion of an overall sentence of nine years.
Habib’s lawyer, Charles Montpetit, had suggested a six-and-ahalf-year sentence would be more fair in this case because Habib had no previous criminal record when arrested in March 2016. Montpetit had no comment for reporters as he exited the courtroom.
Habib, who was born in Montreal to a Catholic mother from Quebec and a Muslim father from Afghanistan, was in Syria in 2013 for a period of three months. In November 2012, he left for Turkey to find his wife and two children with the intention of bringing them to Syria. But when he arrived in Turkey, he was informed that his passport had been revoked and Turkish authorities returned him to Canada.
“Since his return to Canada in 2013, (Habib) actively searched for a way to leave the country to return to Syria and join the group Islamic State,” Delisle said.
“The evidence demonstrated that his priority above all was to gain territory and establish Shariah law in Syria and Iraq for the benefit of ISIL. It demonstrated also that he adhered totally to the philosophy and the objectives of ISIL. He clearly told an undercover agent (used in the investigation) that it was ISIL that he wanted to join and that he was married entirely to the ideology of that entity.”
Among the evidence presented to Délisle during the trial was a conversation Habib had on Skype, in 2013, while he was in Syria. During the conversation Habib said: “As for me, I love jihad more than everything. There is no place where I feel more home than here.”
“Since his return to Canada in 2013, (Habib) actively searched for a way to leave the country to return to Syria and join the group Islamic State,” Délisle said.
The undercover agent was part of a so-called Mr. Big operation through which Habib was led to believe he was gradually becoming part of a criminal organization willing to help him leave Canada, either with a fake passport or through clandestine means like hiding him in a shipping container.
On Feb. 25, 2016, while being recorded in the RCMP sting operation, he told the undercover agent he planned to tear up his fake Canadian passport once he arrived in Turkey and hoped to obtain documents identifying him as a Syrian refugee.