Somali-Canadian sentenced to 10 years for trying to join Al-shabab

Mohamed Hersi, a Somali-Canadian from Toronto convicted of trying to travel overseas to join Al-shabab, was on Thursday sentenced 10 years in prison in Brampton by Justice Deena Baltman.

This was the full sentence the Crown asked for in the precedent-setting case.

“Anything less trivializes the nature of his actions,” said the judge about the sentence from the Peel Region court in Brampton.

The 28-year-old, never committed or plotted a specific act of violence. Rather, he was arrested in 2011 at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, where he was waiting to get on a flight to London with a connecting flight to Cairo. The Crown argued he was trying to join Al-Shabaab, which Canada deems a terrorist entity.

Hersi denied the allegations, saying he was going overseas to study Arabic for several months.