The young couple facing terror-related charges was placed under arrest while they were strolling through a park on a spring evening in Villeray.
Details of the arrests made two years ago were presented on Thursday to the jury hearing the trial of Sabrine Djermane, 21, and El Mahdi Jamali, 20. The couple faces four charges in all related to their alleged attempt to leave Canada to join the terrorist group ISIL in Syria and an alleged attempt to build a bomb to commit a terrorist act in Canada.
Rudin Gjoka, a member of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET), was assigned to arrest Jamali while a fellow member of the RCMP was assigned to arrest Djermane. Gjoka said Jamali offered no resistance when he was approached and said nothing when he was informed he would be charged in connection with his plans to travel to Syria. The arrests were carried out on April 15, 2015, at 7:20 p.m. as the couple walked together through Villeray Park. Two marked Montreal police cars were on standby.
Djermane and Jamali were brought in unmarked cars to the RCMP’s headquarters on Dorchester St., where they were detained in holding cells.
The next witness to testify after Gjoka was Sébastien Fradet, a Mountie and a member of INSET in 2015, who was assigned to seize items from the couple while they were detained. He said he only seized a cellphone from Jamali, but that Djermane was carrying a Blackberry and several other items, including a credit and debit card, a receipt for two passport photos and documents concerning her Canadian and Algerian citizenship. The jury was told on Wednesday that the parents of both accused had hidden their passports from them shortly before they were arrested.
At one point in the trial on Thursday, Superior Court Justice Marc David asked prosecutor Lyne Décarie why it was necessary to have Fradet go over each item he seized if the defence was not contesting what was found on their clients when arrested. Décarie said her reasons for taking the extra steps would become clearer when other witnesses are called to testify.
While going over some of the items Fradet seized from Djermane, the jury was shown a passport photo she had recently had taken of her. They were also show images of four cards she was carrying on her at the time of her arrest. Three of the cards, including her OPUS card, included recent photos of her. In all four photos, Djermane posed while wearing a hijab, a veil worn by some Muslim women. Djermane has not worn a veil during the jury trial.
