Police stumbled on recipe for bomb, terror trial told

Search of suspects’ condo yielded evidence they planned to leave country

National security police investigators were not looking for evidence a young couple were allegedly preparing a homemade bomb when they searched the condo they rented in the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough.

Keven Chartrand, who is with the RCMP and is a member of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) testifying at the trial of Sabrine Djermane, 21, and El Mahdi Jamali, 20, on Friday said he and other investigators were told to look for computers, smartphones and documents when they searched the condo on Aird Ave. INSET was investigating concerns expressed by the couple’s relatives and friends that they were about to leave for Syria to join the terrorist group ISIL.

Chartrand said while going through a section of the condo, on April 14, 2015, he spotted a blue file folder with a document inside it labelled “How to fabricate a bomb.”

“It drew my attention right away,” he said. He said by the time he got to the third page in the folder, he realized he had found evidence of something more than an attempt to leave Canada to fight in Syria. “I thought right away ‘this could be a recipe for a bomb.’ ”

Chartrand said he was a soldier in the Canadian Forces for a decade and had served in Afghanistan, where he was trained to look out for improvised explosive devices and took courses on how to handle them. He said later the items listed in the recipe that stood out to him were a pressure cooker, nails and a clock.

The jury was told at the beginning of the trial on Wednesday the handwritten recipe is a “wordfor-word” copy of one the terrorist group al- Qaida had previously published in a propaganda magazine.

One of the handwritten pages in the folder had the heading “Put your trust in Allah,” which was underlined.

The jury was shown the bomb recipe. The person who copied the al-Qaida recipe alternated from French to English as they wrote it down. For example, one sentence read: “Make sure the filament doesn’t break,” while another sentence close to it read “Chauffer le top.”

Found inside the same file folder was an application for a job at a Tim Hortons that appeared to have been filled out by Jamali on March 6, 2015.

During cross-examination of the same witness, defence lawyer Charles Benmouyal asked if INSET expected to find any evidence related to the bomb when the search warrant was executed.

“There was no question of a bomb?” Benmouyal asked. “No,” Chartrand replied. “There was no question of explosives?” “No,” he said. Djermane and Jamali face four charges, including offences alleging they wanted to leave Canada to commit a terrorist act and with possession of explosive materials.

Signs the couple were, indeed, preparing to leave Canada were found inside the condo. The INSET investigator found a suitcase packed with women’s clothing that still had the price tags on them.

The jury was also shown photos of a receipt from Passport Canada. It revealed Djermane and Jamali had both purchased new Canadian passports on April 10, 2015, the same day INSET received a tip from one of Djermane’s sisters, who was concerned she was heading to Syria. It was the sister’s call that launched the investigation.

Djermane and Jamali each paid a $45 fee to Passport Canada to replace lost travel documents. But the jury has been told the parents of both hid their passports from them.

The trial will resume on Monday.