Apprehending Jihad

"I felt that throughout my time in Canada I felt a lot of discrimination, whether because I'm black or I'm Muslim. I felt that if I lived in a Muslim country, I probably would not experience Islamophobia."
"I have sort of a love-hate relationship with the police. I love to hate them, they love to hate me."
Mohamed Hassan Hersi

J.P. Moczulski for National Post   Mohamed Hersi arrives with an unidentified woman to testify at his trial at the Brampton courthouse, April 24, 2014.

 

A young man, working in Toronto as a security guard, is now on trial for attempting, evidence alleges, to join the Al-Shabab Somali terror group. Mr. Hersi, 28, was arrested at Pearson airport in Toronto on March 9, 2011, as he prepared to board a flight to Cairo. The undercover police officer who had secured his confidence, testified that Mr. Hersi had confided in him that his plan was to travel on to Somalia for the purpose of joining Al-Shabab.

Canada's security intelligence agencies, CSIS and the RCMP, have embarked on a proactive enterprise to apprehend young Muslim Canadians who appear to have been radicalized, to stop them from travelling to North African or Middle East hot spots of conflict to join Islamist jihadis in their conflicts with other Muslims and the governments of the countries they travelled to, answering the call to violent jihad.

Overtures have been made to Canadian Muslim centres, schools, mosques, and communities in general to convince them of the value of interaction with the intelligence agencies to warn them when untoward jihadist action, or knowledge of recruitment to jihad activities are taking place, in a combined security-community attempt to dissuade Muslim youth from embarking on what they may believe is a responsibility to Islam.

Mr. Hersi, however, strenuously denies that either he or his family believe in violent action as Muslims. Opposed to terrorism, he claims it is in his opinion immoral and anti-Islamic. Citing Islam to justify violence requires taking the Koran out of its historical context, he claimed. Which is perplexing, to say the least, to anyone who may have read the Koran or had it interpreted through expert opinion writing on the topic of violence and Islam and its place in the Koran.

Before his arrest, Mr. Hersi's laptop had a history of searching the Internet for issues such as "Somalia AK-47 cost". A search of his hard drive found that he had downloaded an edition of the online magazine Inspire, associated with al Qaeda ideology. Not according to his lawyer Paul Slansky, who averred that his client never intended to join Al-Shabab, nor had he ever, despite the undercover officer's testimony to the contrary, encouraged him to join Al-Shabab.

Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, Mr. Hersi arrived in Canada with his mother, claiming refugee status. His father had died before he could join the family in Toronto, while he was working at the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia. The young man claimed to have been discriminated against while living at a Toronto Community Housing Corp. apartment building, where police, he claimed, harassed blacks and Muslims.

He planned to become fluent in Arabic, to spend six to 12 months in Cairo, then return to Canada for graduate studies and finally move to a Muslim country like Egypt or Turkey. But contact with Al-Shabab? Never! Yes, he had a 'friend' request on Facebook from Abdurahman Guled, a presumed Al-Shabab member, but that was incidental; they had been high school friends.

This court case represents the first attempt to prosecute a Canadian attempting to travel outside the country for the purpose of joining a terrorist group. The RCMP had identified "high risk travelers" they meant to track and disrupt in their purpose to become involved in violent jihad. Two Canadians had died last year during an Al-Shabab massacre in Nairobi at the Westgate shopping mall. 

One of whom was a jihadist, the other a Canada Border Services Agency officer.