Fully expecting his son to sign a peace bond and come home, Kevin Omar Mohamed’s father brought a change of clothes to his court hearing on Tuesday, folded in a torn paper bag placed between his feet.

But instead of being released, his 23-year-old son left for jail in handcuffs and became the latest young man accused of travelling to the Middle East to join a group Canada considers terrorist—in this case Jabhat al-Nusra, a branch of Al Qaeda fighting in Syria.

Mohamed sat slumped in the prisoner’s box, bearded and thick-framed, and nodded gently as Crown lawyer Sarah Shaikh formally charged him with “participating in the activity of a terrorist group.” The RCMP alleges the former University of Waterloo engineering student travelled to Turkey in the spring of 2014 “to join Jabhat al-Nusra.” Police also claim that between April 2014 and March of this year, Mohamed “did knowingly participate or contribute to” the activity of a terrorist group while in Whitby, Waterloo, Mississauga and “elsewhere” in Ontario.

“We were able to not only disrupt this threat to our country’s national security, but also to bring this individual before the Canadian justice system,” said James Malizia, the RCMP’s assistant commissioner responsible for federal operations, in a statement Tuesday.

Mohamed’s lawyer, Anser Farooq, said he and his client’s family were blindsided by the charge.

“I was first made aware of this as I walked into court,” Farooq said after Mohamed was remanded in custody at a Brampton courthouse. “We had clothing and everything.”

Mohamed was initially arrested in Waterloo on Friday. Though he was charged with two weapons offences relating to a hunting knife, the RCMP announced over the weekend that he was apprehended under a “fear of terrorism” provision in the Criminal Code, a preventive measure that allows police to place restrictions on suspects through peace bonds when there isn’t enough evidence for a criminal charge.

Farooq said he didn’t know why his client was not charged with the terrorism offence at the time of his arrest, when police told him they were investigating Mohamed for five terrorism offences. “They may lay more (charges), they may not,” he said. “That’s entirely up to the Crown.”

RCMP Sgt. Adam MacIntosh, the arresting officer who was in court on Tuesday, told the Star he couldn’t talk about the details of the case.

The participation charge that Mohamed faces is under section 83.18 of the Criminal Code, an offence that lawyer Breese Davies said terror suspects are frequently accused of in Canada. Many of the Toronto 18 suspects, convicted of plotting to set off bombs in Ontario’s capital, were charged with it. So were the VIA Rail terror plotters, one of whom Davies represented in court.

“Generally that’s the offence, because it is flexible enough to capture almost any conduct,” said Davies, who was also one of the lawyers involved in a 2012 Supreme Court challenge of the participation offence and other terrorist crimes in the Criminal Code. Davies said offending conduct for the charge can be anything from fixing a car belonging to a terrorist group to building a bomb. The key aspect is intent, she said. To be found guilty, the accused person must be aware that their actions—carried out with clear-eyed intent—will help or enhance a terrorist group in its activities.

Asked if she might know why police would arrest Mohamed and wait four days to charge him with the offence, Davies said such delays are not unusual. She speculated that police could have interrogated him for more evidence, or searched his computer and phone. She also said that the cities named in the charge sheet would likely mean police have evidence that elements of the offence were carried out there—in Whitby, Waterloo, Mississauga and elsewhere.

Mohamed has been linked by numerous sources to a Twitter account under the name “Abu Jayyid.” Mubin Shaikh, a former RCMP and CSIS informant who worked on the Toronto 18 case, said he was following the account for the past two years. “He’s not a hardcore ideologue—that I don’t believe. That he is a sympathizer, big time, is without question,” Shaikh said.

Shaikh, as well as a friend of Mohamed’s who asked not to be named for fear of being investigated himself, told the Star that Mohamed did travel to Turkey in 2014 with his brother and mother.

Mohamed’s friend told the Star on Tuesday that he was shocked to learn of the terrorism charge, but that he heard Mohamed talk supportively of al-Nusra and other groups in Syria that are fighting the central government of Bashar Assad. “Him actually going there (to join) is hard to imagine,” the friend said. “Is it impossible? No. Is it hard to believe? Kind of.”

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Mohamed is slated to appear in court April 19 for a bail hearing that’s expected to last three days. The maximum penalty for his terrorism charge is 10 years in prison.

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