A witness testifying at the trial of a Canadian woman accused of joining ISIS in Syria has described watching her close friend become “brainwashed.”
Naveed Deol said she and Ammara Amjad were once like sisters. But Amjad’s extremist rhetoric eventually became so preachy that they parted ways.
“It just wasn’t the same person,” Deol testified.
Captured in Syria during the 2019 defeat of ISIS, Amjad is currently on trial in Brampton, Ont., for participating in the activities of a terrorist group.
She is the first Canadian woman to face criminal prosecution for allegedly living under the Islamic State in Syria as the terror group committed atrocities.
The Crown wrapped up its case against the Pakistan-born 32-year-old mother of two on Wednesday, following testimony from the RCMP officer who extracted Amjad’s messages from her mother’s phone.
Prosecutors have alleged that Amjad was an “extremist traveller” who left Canada in 2015 to live under ISIS rule, and remained with the group until its collapse in early 2019.
She married two ISIS fighters, Canadian Bilal Khan and British citizen Hamza Parvez, promoted the terror group’s ideology to family and friends and asked them for money, the Crown alleged.
The prosecution has argued that not all terrorists carry weapons and fight, and that women played key roles in ISIS as wives, mothers and supporters.
“In the eyes of ISIS, these roles were not separate from the organization’s activities,” the Crown said. “They are part of how ISIS sustained itself, strengthened its ranks, maintained life within its territory and advanced its objectives.”
Appearing as a Crown witness on Tuesday, Deol described her former friend’s sudden transformation — a change she blamed on Amjad’s first husband, Canadian extremist Bilal Khan.
Deol said she first met Amjad when their families lived in Montreal. She later moved in with the Amjads in Brampton while she completed her studies.
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Far from an extremist in her teens, Amjad came from a happy Pakistani-Canadian family, would drink alcohol and remove her hijab once she had left home, Deol said.
But in 2015, when the two met at a Boston Pizza, Amjad said Khan had been sending her reading materials, people were suffering and she wanted to help.
Then Amjad asked Deol to take her to the airport. She said she was flying to Turkey to meet Khan, who was already in the Middle East, she explained.
Deol said she felt Amjad, then a 19-year old Walmart worker who had never showed any interest in politics or current affairs, was having an “existential crisis.”
Although Amjad was vague about specifics, Deol suspected she was heading for Syria to join an extremist group and refused to take her friend to the airport.
“I was concerned for her safety,” Deol said, adding she feared Khan was misleading a naive teenager. “I felt that he had brainwashed her.”
On March 17, 2015, Amjad applied to renew her Canadian passport, writing that she was travelling on March 19. She allegedly crossed from Turkey into ISIS controlled Syria.
Although she never gave away her location, she messaged Deol upon arriving to say that she had married Khan, a suspected ISIS fighter, and “was happy.”
“Bilal left today,” according to a message Amjad sent to Deol on WhatsApp. “I don’t know when he’s going to be back or even if he will be back.”
When Khan was killed in November 2015, Amjad took it in stride, Deol said. “She always knew that he was going to die and she was prepared for it.”
Amjad later gave birth to their child, but the baby only lived a day. Again, she was fatalistic. “I’m happy. Whatever happens, happens for a reason,” she said.
She then allegedly married British ISIS member Hamza Parvez. But she did not tell Deol anything about her new husband, except that they had two kids.
Deol, who said she was not religious, said Amjad would accuse her of being “blinded” and not knowing anything, and that she needed to think about the afterlife
Over time, they lost touch. Deol said she was busy with her own life and had grown tired of the way Amjad spoke to her about religion.
By the time they reconnected, Amjad had been taken prisoner by U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters and was being held at a camp for ISIS families in northeast Syria.
“I guess whatever group she was in, it ended,” Deol testified.
Deol said Amjad asked her to send money but she refused. She didn’t want to be associated with someone with extremist beliefs, she explained.
“I just don’t know you anymore,” she told Amjad.
The RCMP launched its investigation in 2019 after receiving a letter from the Canadian military indicating that Amjad was being held at a camp in northeast Syria.
She was detained near the Syrian town of Baghuz, where the “hardcore” of ISIS made their last stand, RCMP Cpl. Mirella Mora, the lead investigator, testified.
The RCMP then asked the U.S. if it had any battlefield evidence concerning Amjad, Khan or Parvez, she said, and the FBI provided a form Parvez had allegedly completed upon entering ISIS territory.
Amjad had spent four years in detention camps for ISIS suspects when the Canadian government brought her home from Syria in April 2023. She was charged with terrorism in October 2023.
Dozens of Canadian extremists left B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec to join ISIS after the terror group emerged from Al Qaeda and seized parts of Syria and Iraq.
While many died, several were captured during the 2019 rout of ISIS. Canada has repatriated nine women from Syria, at significant expense. Two have pleaded guilty, but a half-dozen others have not been charged.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
