Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.
Crown prosecutors have closed what they described as a “very complex case” involving national security in the trial of a Calgary man accused of going to Syria to fight with ISIS.
Jamal Borhot, 34, is accused of carrying out acts of terror with the Islamic State, who allegedly crossed the border into Syria in 2013 and 2014.
He has pleaded not guilty to three charges of participating in terrorist group activity laid against him in September 2020.
On Monday Crown prosecutors finished presenting evidence, after calling around 30 witnesses over the past eight weeks.
“The size of a case alone doesn’t make it complicated but that is certainly a factor. But things like getting evidence overseas, we have to call expert evidence, we have to call evidence that engages with events that took place in a different country, and a nation torn by war All of that makes it complicated,” said Crown prosecutor Kent Brown.
One criminal justice expert says national security issues in Canada and other countries involved also pose an additional challenge for prosecutors.
“In this case you need international cooperation,” said Doug King, professor of criminal justice at Mount Royal University.
“Even in Canada, where police agencies have a hard time sharing information, now we’re talking to national security agencies, national and international security agencies, sharing information and maybe they’re very wary of what they want to provide.”
King says these types of cases, and convictions, are rare.
“There aren’t that many cases here in Canada that have been successfully prosecuted, so this for the Crown prosecutor is something very unusual,” he said.
“Behind the scenes, there are layers and layers of documentation that the Crown prosecutor has to share with the attorney general and national security about, ‘Can you release this information?'”
The defense began presenting its case on Monday and called its first witness to testify.
Roula Salem, an Arabic to English translation specialist, was tasked with reviewing and translating audio files from the RCMP investigation, which included 186 hours worth of recordings.
Salem described the audio and content as difficult to understand at times and said it was a challenge to identify what was being said due to the lack of context.
The trial is expected to end by the end of the week but there is a chance it could be extended beyond that.
Borhot’s co-accused and cousin, Hussein Borhot, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in May 2022 in a separate trial.
In April, Justice Corina Dario rejected the defense’s request to have the case thrown out due to delays in the court process, ruling that Borhot’s rights had not been violated under the charter challenge.
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
source link https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/crown-closes-case-defence-calls-first-witness-in-terrorism-trial-for-calgary-man-1.6939476
