SOL first: A Jihadi from Somali made history...

[LayZie G.]

Canadian ‘terror tourist’ Mohamed Hersi gets 10 years in jail for planning to join Islamic jihadist group in Somalia.

 

 

 

The first Canadian convicted under a law criminalizing attempts to join a terrorist group was handed the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison on Thursday in a case his lawyer had argued was one of entrapment.

 

 

What if Toronto man really is the middle-of-the-road Muslim his family says he is?

 

 

There are two possibilities that naturally emerge from the sentencing hearing for Mohamed Hersi, the first Canadian to be convicted for attempting to participate in terrorist activity abroad, in his case in his native Somalia, and for counselling someone else to do it too.

 

The hearing was held Wednesday before Ontario Superior Court Judge Deena Baltman, who reserved her decision until July 24.

 

The first possibility was raised by Hersi’s lawyer, Paul Slansky, the character letters he submitted on his client’s behalf and to some degree by Hersi’s testimony in his own defence at trial.

 

This scenario has him as a peaceable blowhard who had been, as Hersi put it once on the witness stand, talking “out of my ass” when he told an undercover police agent that he was going to join the Al-Shabab terror group and who simply couldn’t have hidden his purported fanatical character from family and friends.

 

Read more from Christie Blatchford …

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An Ontario Superior Court jury had convicted Mohamed Hassan Hersi in May on charges of attempting to participate in the activities of a terrorist group and providing counsel to a person to participate in terrorist activity.

 

In court in Brampton, Ont., Justice Deena Baltman sentenced Hersi, 28, of Toronto, a one-time security guard, to maximum and consecutive five-year terms for each count, saying he was about to become a “terror tourist.”

 

Hersi had argued he was the victim of abuse of process, including entrapment, but Baltman dismissed the objection last month and confirmed the conviction — the first since a section of the Criminal Code on attempting to participate in a terrorist group became law in 2001.

 

Police arrested Hersi in March 2011 at Toronto’s international airport as he waited to board a flight to Cairo via London. They alleged he planned to join Somalia’s Al-Shabab, an Islamic terrorist group known for its atrocities. He said he was only planning to study Arabic in Egypt.

 

Hersi’s lawyer, Paul Slansky, said in an interview he would appeal both conviction and a sentence he called excessive. He also planned to ask for bail pending the appeal, which he said would be based on several errors, including an unfair charge to the jury and unfair trial process.

 

 

Police began investigating after a dry cleaner found a computer memory stick among clothing on which, among other things, a manual for making explosives had been downloaded.

 

An undercover officer who then befriended Hersi — he was born in Somalia but came to Canada as a child — testified the accused told him he planned to join Al-Shabab.

 

While the RCMP hailed the conviction as a significant milestone, Slansky decried police methods used in the case, saying they had no reasonable grounds to investigate his client in the first place.

 

“The very nature of being left alone by the state is at stake,” Slansky told The Canadian Press.

 

“They aren’t supposed to be going around to people randomly and seeing if someone could be a criminal — inserting undercover officers in everyday life situations.”

 

Slansky had requested a sentence of three to four years. Given the circumstances, he said, handing down the maximum for each offence was unreasonable.

 

“Generally speaking, it will be rare to be imposing the maximum sentence unless it is the worst offender and the worst offence,” Slansky said. “This is not that case.”

 

The sentencing comes a day after RCMP announced they had charged a man from Burnaby, B.C., with leaving Canada to join Islamist fighters in Syria — the first such charge under expanded provisions of the law under which Hersi was charged.

 

 

They aren’t supposed to be going around to people randomly and seeing if someone could be a criminal — inserting undercover officers in everyday life situations

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Police accused Hasibullah Yusufzai, 25, of committing an offence for the benefit of a terrorist group or was directed by or associated with such a group.

 

“The issue of individuals seeking to travel abroad to participate in terrorist activity remains a concern to the RCMP as they represent a threat not only to the international community but to Canada and its allies as well,” the RCMP said in a statement Thursday.

 

“The key to the early detection of such threats resides within a collaborative approach.”

 

 

 

 

 

SOURCE: National Post

 

[Holac]

Thank You Lazy. Pests like this idiot are what is destroying our future. I don't care if he claims he was setup. Let him rot in jail for all we care.

 

End recruitment for terrorists Al shabaab. Be very afraid chicken Jihadis.

[DoctorKenney]

Good riddance to bad rubbish

 

This snake should have been imprisoned longer, but it's a good start.