Given the general credulity of the kuffar, Ismael Habib is to be forgiven for thinking this line of defense was worth a try. He might well have gotten away with it.
“Quebec man who dreamed of joining ISIL convicted of terrorism charge,” by Graeme Hamilton, National Post, June 19, 2017:
MONTREAL — Ismaël Habib wanted the court to believe he was an accidental jihadi who travelled to Syria in 2013 out of “curiosity” and took no part in the fighting. He never heard a single gunshot while there, he testified, comparing the experience to summer camp.
And when Habib began arranging for a return trip in 2016, he said it was because he was worried about the security of his wife and two small children there.
On Monday, Quebec Court Judge Serge Délisle dismissed 29-year-old Habib’s testimony as “outlandish,” saying it was “destroyed by contradictions and weighed down by elements of dishonesty and lies.” He found Habib guilty of attempting to travel to Syria to commit a terrorist act, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Instead of accepting Habib’s sworn testimony, the judge believed another version of events that an unsuspecting Habib offered in February 2016 to an undercover RCMP officer.
Habib, who was living in Gatineau at the time of his arrest, had first come to the attention of police after the 2013 trip to Syria, which led to the cancellation of his passport.
His trial heard how police then lured him into a so-called Mr. Big operation, making him believe he was dealing with a criminal organization capable of providing false passports and smuggling him and other jihadis out of Canada by ship.
In a meeting captured on video and played for the court, he told an undercover officer posing as a Québécois crime boss that he dreamed of living under the rule of ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
He told the supposed crime boss he wanted “to do as much as I can to help the Islamic State, in all ways, financially, physically or dying for them — whatever they need.”
He explained: “We love death like you love life.” He added that he wanted to pay off all his debts before leaving for Syria because if he died in debt, he would be denied entry to paradise and the 72 virgins awaiting him there.
Habib also said that on his previous trip to Syria, he and his brother-in-law had joined up with some Chechen jihadis. Photos entered as evidence show Habib in combat attire with a knife on his belt, and he acknowledged buying an AK-47 assault rifle. He said at one point he personally whipped a captured soldier from a rival faction.
Habib told the undercover officer his form of jihad involves fighting to establish Shariah law in the Middle East, not attacking civilians in the West. “That’s not my style,” he said. But he did applaud the November 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people, saying they were deserved because of French intervention against ISIL….