The terror trial of Awso Peshdary was adjourned Wednesday following three days of hearings in which court heard testimony about the path to jihad allegedly taken by two of Peshdary’s associates, Ottawa students John Maguire and Khadar Khalib.

Both are presumed dead after travelling to Syria to join the ranks of ISIL.

The RCMP arrested Peshdary, now 28, in February 2015 and accused him of being a top ISIL recruiter and financier. International arrest warrants remain active for Maguire, 24, the Kemptville man who appeared in a notorious December 2014 ISIL recruitment video calling on Muslims to wage jihad on Canadian soil, and Khalib, 23, an Algonquin College student who left Ottawa in March 2014 and surfaced on social media in photos from an ISIL battlefield.

Peshdary has pleaded not guilty in a trial wrought with delays and covered by a sweeping publication ban on the names of the federal Crown witnesses.

Court was adjourned abruptly Wednesday when the travel agent who booked a flight to Syria told court he needed more time to produce “more complete” records of the transaction.

Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett adjourned the oft-delayed trial until mid-September.

In testimony Tuesday, court was told Khalib had once applied for admission to an Alberta aviation school, but was rejected.

“He dreamed of a job in aviation,” court heard, but Khalib did not have the grades required for admission. He then enrolled in an Algonquin College business program.

The identities of those who testified Tuesday are protected by a publication ban.

He had a job in Ottawa, paid no rent and had no living expenses, and saved his own money to pay tuition.

While at Algonquin, court heard that Khalib became involved with a “core group of friends” in the campus Muslim Students’ Association.

There were “no warning signs” of radicalization, court heard, before Khalib was dropped off at an Ottawa bus station one day in late March 2014 and was never seen again, except in photos circulated later on social media showing him dressed in mujahideen fatigues, holding an assault rifle in front of an ISIL flag.

He had told those close to him he was going to Toronto “to relax.”

Court was told Khalib instead used his own money, earmarked for college tuition, to pay for a flight to Syria.

When his loved ones checked his room back home, “Everything was gone,” court heard. “It was like a nightmare.”

When they finally reached him through Facebook, Khalib apparently told them he was in Syria for “humanitarian reasons.”

They urged him to come back home, with one recalling in court: “This is not your cause, it’s not your war. You shouldn’t be there.”

He ignored their pleas to return home.

On a request from Peshdary’s lawyer, Solomon Friedman, Parfett signed a recommendation to keep Peshdary incarcerated in Ottawa until his trial resumes.

— With files from Gary Dimmock

ahelmer@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/helmera</s>The terrorism trial of Ottawa’s Awso Peshdary, alleged Islamic State recruiter and financier, is finally underway after years of legal and law enforcement delays.

Peshdary was formally arraigned Monday in an Ottawa courtroom on charges of participating in the activity of a terrorist group, facilitating an activity for a terrorist group, and two counts of conspiring to participate or contribute to an activity of a terrorist group with local men John Maguire and Khadar Khalib — both of whom are presumed dead.

Peshdary has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

The family of John Maguire, alleged by prosecutors to have been the star recruit of Peshdary testified Monday, painted the picture of a fallen son who went from being a parent’s dream to depressed loner to a radicalized Muslim convert who left for Syria without telling any of them, only to be presumed killed near the Turkish-Syrian border in 2015.

Maguire grew up in Kemptville and after an ISIL propaganda video starring the white-skinned Canadian was broadcast through ISIL channels, he became a face of homegrown terrorism exported to the Middle East, never to be seen again.

Christopher Maguire, John’s cousin but more like a brother, told the court that Peshdary and John were good friends. They often saw him at Friday prayers.

Once Maguire had left to join ISIL in Syria, Peshdary either texted or called Chris to say he needed to meet with him urgently. When they did, Chris said, Peshdary had a message for him from John and gave him two books on Islam to give to his family.

Chris, too, had converted to Islam and Peshdary was “a little pushy” when he heard that Chris had “taken a step back” from his practice of the faith.

William Langenberg, Maguire’s stepfather, told the court about his son’s “open personality,” how he liked to joke and would use his aptitude in chemistry class to make friends with girls. But the John they knew had changed. Once a lover of music and well-known in the community, he destroyed his prized guitars in the backyard to prevent himself and others from sinning.

After moving to California in 2009 to attend college, John asked to come back just the next year.

“He came back as a loner,” Langenberg said. “He smoked a lot of dope in California” and “he was full of fear, felt isolated and lonely.”

His relationships were gone. That is, until he connected with a group of friends in Ottawa, Peshdary allegedly among them.

“It happened gradually,” Langenberg said of the change. John had new friends, he found a new religion, he was eating halal, changing his clothing, and he had a Muslim girlfriend who wore a hijab.

His family didn’t want to lose him. “We never interfered.”

But then he was concerned at a Christmas dinner about family dogs accidentally touching him. He called his sister a whore for wearing certain outfits and exposing her skin.

Once John left for Syria, where he told his family he was doing humanitarian work, they remained in contact with him. But the conversations centred on his faith and how concerned he was that his friends in Ottawa were being followed by the police.

The last time Langenberg heard from him was one week before the propaganda video made national news in November 2012.

In that six-minute video played in court, Maguire tells all Canadians that he was one of them, but now “your people will be indiscriminately targeted as you indiscriminately target our people.

“You either pack your bags or you prepare your explosive devices,” Maguire told the camera. The choice was to purchase airline tickets or sharpen their knives.

Maguire, while still in Canada, had worked part-time jobs at the Independent Grocer, Zellers and Walmart. His stepfather co-signed a student loan for him to attend the University of Ottawa.

“How he got all that money together to go to Syria, I don’t know,” Langenberg said.

On cross-examination, Langenberg told the court that he had assumed John had also made some money from an e-book he wrote in college.

His student loans, however, were also in excess of $17,000 — money that Langenberg has no account of. The stepfather also has no bill for university tuition, leaving how that money was spent a mystery to him.

The loan was eventually paid off. But Langenberg has no idea by whom.

Shirley Anne Maguire, John’s grandmother, told the judge-alone trial she had been up all night before her testimony.

She remembers the last time she saw John, standing in her house saying he was going over to a friend’s to study. Days later CSIS would come knocking on her door to tell her that Maguire was in Turkey.

In the time before he left, Maguire had wanted her to go to mosque with him.

“I told him that there was nobody on two feet that would sway me from what I believed,” she said.

“I honestly felt he was being brainwashed. I think he was programmed and he was afraid of going to hellfire.”

She had a hard time describe the “bronze”-skinned, “dark”-haired friend who was with John before he left her house and the country for good. “They all look alike to me.”

Peshdary was swept up by RCMP in 2015 alongside three other Ottawa men who were part of a terrorism cluster in the capital.

Twins Ashton and Carlos Larmond and their friend Suliman Mohamed have all pleaded guilty to their offences and remain in federal prison.

Peshdary was originally slated to stand trial in 2016, then in March 2018, before further delays finally brought evidence to an Ottawa courtroom.
The terror trial of accused ISIL recruiter Awso Peshdary is adjourned after three days of hearings in which the court hears testimony about the path to jihad allegedly taken by two of his associates, Ottawa students John Maguire and Khadar Khalib.