Terror-linked arrests lead to soul searching at Montreal school

MONTREAL— A Montreal school is ratcheting up security and looking deep into its soul after the arrests of a young couple for what police allege were plans to commit terrorist acts.

Coming just months after five other Collège de Maisonneuve students were among seven Quebecers who fled Canada with plans to enter Syria and the ranks of the Islamic State, school officials have consulted experts on extremism and even arranged for preventative police patrols looking for signs of radicalization at the downtown campus.

Little is known so far about the arrests Tuesday night of El Mahdi Jamali and Sabrine Djaermane, other than the police allegation that they planned to commit an unspecified terrorism offence and that they attended Maisonneuve.

Wrapped up in the school’s recent saga is Adil Charkaoui, an Islamic leader in Montreal who rents the school’s facilities for a weekend Muslim youth group but is more commonly known for the years he spent being probed by federal agents as a suspected Al Qaeda sleeper agent.

Charkaoui has never been charged with any crime, is now a Canadian citizen and is suing Ottawa over his ordeal.

Maisonneuve, with a population of 6,000 students, first entered the spotlight this winter after reports emerged about students fleeing the country for Syria.

In the wake of those departures, school officials — once focused only on preparing their charges for university or the world of work — have now been put through a crash course on the signs of radicalization in a school-wide bid to prevent other students being lost to radical ideology.

“It’s an attempt to give some meaning to what has happened. If we don’t have that it would be a total depression. It’s powerlessness,” said Brigitte Desjardins, a spokesperson for Collège de Maisonneuve.

In consulting police and radicalization experts, school officials wanted more than anything to know if they had a terrorist recruiter at work on campus, or if they had missed some telltale warning signs that could have foreshadowed the disappearances. The message was positive, but also cause for despair, Desjardins said.

“There were no signs at all.”

Of the five students who left, two were girls — Shayma Senouci and Ouardia Kadem. Another two were their boyfriends, Desjardins revealed.

A few of them were quite active on social media, while others left barely a trace. Imad Rafai, a Collège de Maisonneuve student, was studying in the hopes he would go on to be a doctor. He was moved by the Ebola outbreak raging in West Africa and seemed to admire the work of Médecins Sans Frontières, the humanitarian group working on the front lines. Rafai even posted a link on Oct. 23, 2014 to a story about Canadian Muslim leaders paying tribute to Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, the military sentry killed at the National War Memorial in Ottawa by homegrown terrorist Michael Zehaf-Bibeau.

Desjardins said a number of those who have left — like a great number of young people who don’t turn to extremist ideologies — appeared to have been searching for a cause.

“What we know of those who left is that they left to save the world. They didn’t leave to wage war. It was with good intentions,” she said.

Others allege that Charkaoui has played a role after revelations that several of the missing students had enrolled in Arabic-language and Islamic instruction courses that he runs.

Collège de Maisonneuve initially suspended its rental contract with Charkaoui before allowing him to resume course so long as an Arab-language observer is present during the courses. Collège Rosemont, another Montreal school at which Charkaoui ran youth kickboxing and karate courses, cancelled its rental contract entirely this week, saying it had found that links on his group’s website led to material it considered to be extremist.

Charkaoui issued a statement this week saying that the actions that have been taken against him are “unfounded, defamatory and discriminatory.”

He did not respond to messages about whether he knew of Jamali or Djaermane, or if either had attended the mosque Charkaoui runs, the Assahaba Islamic Community Centre. In late February, Jamali give the centre a five-star rating on his Facebook page.

The day before the two teens were arrested this week, Collège Rosemont had just announced plans to boost security, bringing in a specially trained police officer three days a week.

Whether such a measure would have affected the couple’s alleged activities is not clear.

When they moved in together just one month ago, according to a source at the couple’s building, Jamali and Djaermane told people that they were newly married and starting a life together. The Star has not been able to verify that claim.

Jamali also mentioned that he had quit his studies at Collège de Maisonneuve after just one semester and was looking for work (school records show he was still enrolled for the winter session, which is ongoing). Djaermane appeared committed to her studies.

The girl’s family may have been ill-at-ease with the relationship. At their initial court appearance on Wednesday, a man identified only as Djaermane’s father told the Journal de Montréal he wished people would not “rush to judgment” against his daughter.

“She is a victim, more than anything. He was determined to marry her,” said the man, without providing further explanation.

Jamali’s family, residing at the modest public housing complex where he spent much of his adolescence, has so far refused to speak about him.

On social media, Jamali, a soccer player, frequently mentioned the plight of Muslims around the world.

“Mali, Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma . . . murders by the thousands and we don’t care,” he wrote on his Facebook page on April 15, 2013, referring to conflicts around the world where Muslims were dying in large numbers. “But Boston, Oh-la-la, a few injured. Get out of here you hypocrites.”

Desjardins said there were no shared classes, common activities or proof of any direct contact having occurred on campus between the couple arrested this week and the first group of missing students.

The school has taken some comfort in the fact that national security investigators have not appeared on school grounds in recent days seeking to question other students or staff.

“For us, that’s an indication that nothing happened here. If it was the case, I would think the police would have come here,” Desjardins said.