By Stewart Bell
Mohamed Hassan Hersi was charged in 2011 with attempting to join Somali terrorist organization Al-Shabab. Peter J. Thompson/National Post/Files
Lawyer Paul Slansky claimed conversations in which his client, Mohamed Hersi, allegedly said he intended to travel to Somalia to fight with the armed Islamist faction never happened and that the officer’s notes had been manufactured.
He also said the officer had concocted notes alleging that Mr. Hersi had said that it should be every Muslim’s dream to die a martyr, as well as a discussion about the danger of being caught reading the Al Qaeda propaganda magazine Inspire.
“You made that up,” the lawyer said.
“Your suggestion’s wrong,” the officer replied.
Similar exchanges recurred throughout the day of testimony, as Mr. Slansky cross-examined the officer, who had befriended the accused, playing the part of a Canadian extremist intent on joining Al-Shabab.
The officer stood by the entries he had recorded in his notebook after each encounter with Mr. Hersi. Asked if Mr. Hersi had really said he was going to Somalia to join Al-Shabab, the officer replied, “He used the word ‘motherland,’ but other than that, that’s what he said.”
A 28-year-old Somali-Canadian, Mr. Hersi was arrested at Toronto’s Pearson airport in 2011 as he was about to leave for London and Cairo. Police alleged Egypt was only a stop on his voyage to Somalia. He faces two terror-related counts.
He came to police attention in September 2010, after a Toronto dry cleaner found a USB memory stick in his security guard uniform. Police determined that one of the files on the jump drive was a book with bomb-making instructions.
According to the undercover officer, Mr. Hersi later admitted he was a friend of Mohamed Elmi Ibrahim, a Canadian who became radicalized and joined Al-Shabab in 2009, only to die shortly thereafter.
Mr. Hersi also said his “cousin” had been arrested for attempting to bomb an Ohio shopping mall, according to the officer, although Mr. Slansky suggested the would-be terrorist was actually Mr. Hersi’s nephew.
Al-Shabab was behind last year’s massacre at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi that left two Canadians dead. The case has come to trial amid concerns about the radicalization of young Canadians — dozens of whom have joined Islamist terror groups in the Middle East and Africa.
Source: National Post
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