‘Turned his back on America’

to jihadist martyrs, according to court records.

The trio sold their belongings and disconnected their cellphones. Al Farekh did not give his grandmother, with whom he had been living, any notice he was leaving the country.

Once in Pakistan, the trio travelled to the north where they received training from al-Qaida.

In January 2009, two vehicles approached the fence line at the U.S. military’s Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. According to prosecutors, the driver of the first vehicle detonated an improvised explosive device, injuring one U.S. serviceman and numerous Afghan nationals, including a pregnant woman.

The second vehicle — carrying 7,500 pounds of explosives — became stuck in a blast crater caused by the first explosion. The driver tried to flee but was shot and killed. Forensic investigators later found 18 latent fingerprints matching al Farekh on adhesive tape used to bind together the undetonated explosives, prosecutors said.

Al Farekh was captured in Pakistan and brought to the U.S. in 2015. He was subsequently found guilty last fall of numerous offences, including conspiracy to murder American military personnel, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, conspiracy to bomb a government facility and providing material support to al-Qaida.

In 2011, the RCMP announced that al Farekh’s two travelling companions — Ferid Ahmed Imam and Maiwand Yar, both Canadian citizens — had been charged with terroristrelated activities.

At the time, the RCMP said Imam, a former biochemistry student, had travelled to Pakistan and had become a weapons instructor at a terrorist training camp aligned with al-Qaida. Meanwhile, Yar, a former mechanical engineering student, had told people he and Imam intended to ally themselves with the Taliban so they could kill NATO soldiers in Afghanistan, Mounties said. Their whereabouts is not known. In his letter presented in court Tuesday, al Farekh said while he did not believe in violence, “I do understand how Muslims could be drawn into jihad and violence.”

“Hearing daily reports of innocent casualties and invading armies, and urged on by respected figure (sic) in our community, it is possible to understand how a young Muslim might be lead onto a path that he or she, if lucky enough to have survived, regrets deeply. It is my view that following such a path is risky, foolhardy, and most fundamentally wrong.”