The Irresistibly Romantic Lure of Jihad

"The Islamic State, a young adult couple who want to leave Canada to join this terrorist group and the discovery of a recipe to make a bomb with some of the necessary ingredients. In one sentence, that is what our case is about."
"In a binder found on the nightstand in the bedroom of the condo [an officer] found, on two pages, a recipe about how to make a bomb, written by hand by Mr. Jamali."
"This recipe, the evidence will show, was word for word a recipe published by al-Qaeda [in one of their magazines]."
Federal prosecutor Lyne Decarie, Montreal

Sabrine Djermane and El Mahdi Jamali were 19 and 18 years old respectively when they were charged in April 2015. (Radio-Canada)

Crown prosecutor  Decarie spoke of a propaganda video to be addressed by the last of the witnesses, an expert on Syria, Islamic State and its fascist ideology, that was produced to incite Muslims in Canada to commit as faithful in Islam to one of two choices: pack a bag, buy a plane ticket and join Islamic State abroad -- alternatively prepare explosives, sharpen knives, use vehicles, whatever it takes to perpetrate an attack right where they live; in this instance, Canada.

"The Crown intends to demonstrate that El Mahdi Jamali and Sabrine Djermane responded to this call", Decarie informed the jury at this trial on terrorism expected to take ten weeks before it winds up with a jury declaration of innocent or guilty.  The accused pair are young Montrealers; El Mahdi Jamli and Sabrine Djermane, now 20 and 21 respectively, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them.

These charges are explosive in their nature, four in number: attempting to leave Canada to commit a terror act abroad; possession of an explosive substance; facilitating a terrorist act; and committing an act under the direction or for the profit of a terrorist organization. The Crown prosecutor has named as witnesses, 31 members of the police along with expert and civilian witnesses whom her legal team plans to call upon throughout the extended trial.

Police are set to give testimony over their seizures taken from the condo that the two accused share. The home of Jamali's parents also  yielded evidence, in the form of a receipt for passports, a new suitcase with new, tagged clothing, along with a plane ticket complete with planned May departure date. A number of other documents were also taken as evidence. RCMP agents as well, discovered a bag containing bomb-making equipment.

When they returned again in the company of an explosives expert other incriminating evidence was unearthed, along with a list alleged to have been written by Djermane. Their cellphones, three computers and a tablet were taken and analyzed in RCMP laboratories. Their Facebook pages were of interest to the experts tasked with going through them to flag conversations of interest, messages and links they had posted.

The two accused cast themselves by pleading not guilty, as innocents who had no idea that the materials they had amassed, the ideology they appeared connected to through Islamist zeal, and the motivational effect of the video extolling the virtues inherent in violent jihad had nothing whatever to do with them.  If it had not been for the concern expressed by an as-yet unidentified individual who alerted police, according to Kevin Rouleau, the first witness and principal RCMP investigator on the case, their activities would have gone undetected.

Sabrine Djermane and El Mahdi Jamali, shown here in a courtroom sketch during jury selection, are on trial for terrorism-related offences. (Radio-Canada)

It was, in fact, by Jamali's own hand, posting the iconic black flag of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on his Facebook account, that took the initial attention of the person who contacted the RCMP. Officer Rouleau was given the initial suspicious information about the pair on April 10, 2015, meeting soon afterward with the complainant, then going on to interview the suspects.