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

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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.