Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser both conspired to commit murder in support of terrorism and participated in a terrorist group, a jury has found after 10 days of deliberating.

But only Esseghaier was found guilty for conspiring to derail a Via rail passenger train heading from New York to Toronto – a plan that involved drilling a hole into a railway bridge support under cover of darkness.

The jury remained deadlocked on Jaser’s charge after requesting additional clarification around the law of conspiracy and reviews of testimony during their lengthy deliberations.

“Some of the members of the jury weren’t quite sure that Mr. Jaser agreed to derail the train,” said Crown prosecutor Croft Michaelson of the deadlocked charge in what he described as a legally complex case. He described both men as “real, serious public dangers.”

Jaser was found guilty on three charges, Esseghaier on five.

Both face potential life sentences at an upcoming sentencing hearing.

Reached by phone in Tunis, Essegaier’s father said he’d heard of the verdict against his son but had not had a chance to connect with him.

“I want to speak to him, but until now, I cannot speak to him by phone,” said Mohammed Rached Esseghaier.

Michaelson said the Crown will consider whether to prosecute Jaser again on the train plot conspiracy charge.

Jaser pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his lawyer told the jury Jaser never truly agreed to any terrorist plot, he was simply trying to scam money off Esseghaier and an undercover FBI agent.

Esseghaier, who is unrepresented and has refused to participate in the trial because he believes he should be judged only under the Qur’an, not the “man-made” Criminal Code, had a not-guilty plea placed on the record for him by Justice Michael Code.

On behalf of Jaser and his family — including his father, Mohammed, who has sat in the courtroom every day of the trial — his lawyer John Norris said they were disappointed with the outcome.

He gave credit to the jury whose questions and lengthy deliberations showed they “clearly struggled with reaching verdicts.”

“In today’s political climate that cannot have been easy. The easy solution would have been to take the evidence at face value and just say these men are obviously guilty.”

At Norris’s request convictions have not been entered into the record pending possible legal arguments.

Michaelson told reporters that the verdicts were “legally sustainable.”

On Wednesday, the eighth day of deliberations, the jury announced they had reached a unanimous verdict for one accused but were at an impasse on charges relating to the other accused. They were asked to keep trying.

Earlier, the jury asked a question about what was legally required to determine intent in conspiracy charges.

“The element of intention means that the two parties to the agreement genuinely meant to bring about that crime as opposed to feigning such an intention while having some other intention such as making money,” Code told the jury.

Merely discussing, exploring or researching the train plot would not be sufficient for intent, he said.

Over the six-week trial, the jury heard more than 20 hours of conversations secretly recorded in 2012 by an undercover FBI agent in which various ways to kill Canadians were discussed. The agent, going by the alias Tamer El Noury, was the key witness for the prosecution.

The main terror plot under discussion was the idea of derailing a Via Rail passenger train from New York to Toronto by damaging a railway bridge, but Jaser’s pet plan, according to what was heard on the recordings, was using a sniper rifle to shoot Canadian leaders and members of the Jewish community.

“I want this city, this whole country, to burn,” Jaser said in one conversation.

The Crown argued that Esseghaier and Jaser were motivated by Islamic extremism, seeking retaliation for the presence of Canadian and U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

In one chilling exchange between Esseghaier and the undercover FBI agent, who went by the pseudonym Tamer El Noury, on a drive from Toronto to Montreal, Esseghaier is heard to say on the recording: “They are killing the women and children in our land ... So why don’t we do what they are doing?”

He continued: “We are not able to kick out the army by fighting army between army. So in that case we are in the obligation to use other ways.”

The jury heard that Esseghaier, after returning from Iran in March 2012, where he spent time with a group of men, including one linked to Al Qaeda, allegedly recruited Jaser to the train plot. The two men scouted out a location in St. Catharines before abandoning it for being too sturdy and in close proximity to a residential area.

Their second choice was the Highland Creek railway bridge in Scarborough. But their trip, with El Noury in tow, to examine the structure of the bridge and figure out the best spot to drill a hole in the supports ended badly when police questioned them in the parking lot.

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A train conductor had reported three men walking along the railway bridge.

After this, court was told, a rift emerged between the two accused men; Esseghaier accusing Jaser of being a coward and Jaser accusing Esseghaier of being “rash,” “extreme” and impossible to work with. The train plot would only kill a few “sheep,” Jaser said, but they needed to target “the wolf.”

By Sept. 24, 2012, Jaser had withdrawn from the train plot and Esseghaier began to recruit a replacement, according to testimony at the trial.

Esseghaier, a Tunisian working on his PhD in biotechnology at a lab in Quebec at the time, did not cross-examine any witnesses or present a defence, though he did make a closing statement through his appointed lawyer, in which he reiterated that he would not be judged by humans.

Norris, the lawyer for Jaser, a permanent resident of Palestinian heritage who had been working as a school bus driver in Markham, argued that Jaser was actually feigning enthusiasm for the terrorist schemes in order to scam money out of Esseghaier and El Noury, who was posing as a wealthy, radical businessman hoping to finance their operations.

“Mr. Jaser, in short, is a con artist. He is not a terrorist,” Norris told the jury in his closing address.

On the ninth day of deliberations, the jury requested that the portion of El Noury’s testimony dealing with the time Jaser and El Noury first met be played back.

This included El Noury’s testimony about a dinner where Jaser described himself as an “ideas man” and spoke about business plans and investment opportunities. One idea Jaser raised, that recurred throughout conversations with El Noury until their final talk on Sept. 24, was opening a restaurant.

After this conversation over dinner on Sept. 9, Jaser, Esseghaier and El Noury went on a walk and discussed the train plot and its objective — to force the Canadian and U.S. governments to remove their troops from Muslim lands – for the first time.

“We want to make sure that they understand that as long as they’re over there, their people will not be safe on this side,” Jaser was heard saying in the recording.

“I could care less about who dies. Everyone is a target. They pay taxes …”

Jaser and Esseghaier were both charged with:

One count of conspiracy to damage transportation property and endanger lives for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a terrorist group,

One count of conspiring to commit murder for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a terrorist group

Two counts of participating in or contributing to a terrorist group.

Esseghaier was tried on a fifth charge of participating in or contributing to a terrorist group.

The conspiracy charges carry the maximum sentence of life, participating in a terrorist group carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.