MONTREAL—Ottawa needs a more humane approach to effectively deal with terrorism cases, including court-ordered therapy for at-risk individuals and counselling — not just criminal charges — for those coming back from Syria and Iraq, according to a new report.

The recommendations are contained in an in-depth account of how a group of young Muslims from Quebec were, according to police allegations, radicalized by charismatic preachers, peer pressure and polarizing political debates, and attempted to flee the country in 2015 for the ranks of Daesh, the terror group also known as the Islamic State.

Eleven of the people who are the focus of the report — six females and five males — attended the same school, Montreal’s Collège de Maisonneuve. Four of them were among 10 stopped at the Montreal airport just before boarding a flight for Turkey, which borders Syria, police have alleged. Two others are facing criminal terrorism charges in Quebec.

But five students who disappeared in January 2015 made it to Syria and Iraq and some of them now regret their decision and want to return home, said Benjamin Ducol, head of research for the Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence, which prepared the report.

“That leaves us with some issues in terms of how we are going to bring them back. Do they pose a security threat? I’m sure some of them have been really traumatized by what they have seen and what they have done there,” he said.

The report, which was commissioned by Collège de Maisonneuve, is based on interviews with family, friends and acquaintances of the students, as well as officials at the school.

The report estimates that up to 250 Canadians have travelled to Syria and Iraq, including up to 30 from Quebec.

Some may want to return because of remorse or family pressures, disillusionment with life in a war zone, fear of injury and death, or due to more nefarious plans to conduct attacks in Canada, the report says.

But they may waver out of fears they will be arrested or killed by the groups they try to desert, or the likelihood of arrest upon their return to Canada, the report said. Others may be worried about being labelled a national security threat or having to pay back the financial debts incurred to fund their initial voyage, it read.

There must be legal consequences, the report said, but it is folly to prosecute young radicals without also trying to reason with them and offer rehabilitation.

“The conviction of radicalized individuals cannot be society’s end goal,” it says. “Our system of justice has long recognized the importance of working towards the social reintegration of offenders.”

The recommendations resonate following the death of Aaron Driver, a 24-year-old Daesh sympathizer who was killed by police last week in Strathroy, Ont. The RCMP has said he had hatched a plan to carry out a terrorist attack on Canadian soil.

Driver was under a court-ordered peace bond that restricted his movements, communications and associations as a result of his prolific activity on social media promoting Daesh.

Government prosecutors had initially asked the court to force Driver to undergo religious counselling as a condition of the peace bond, but this was criticized by Driver’s lawyer and others as a violation of his religious freedom and later abandoned.

In the wake of Driver’s death, federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has said he is considering making counselling a standard and mandatory condition of terror-related peace bonds.

The report into the Quebec cases of radicalization recommends the federal government do so as a way to protect both the radicalized individual and the Canadian public.

“That needs to be part of the legal contract because radicalization that turns into action—that happens in the head,” said Herman Okomba-Deparice, the executive director of the Montreal-based centre, which offers counseling and support to individuals who have adopted an extremist outlook.

The general conditions that led to the radicalization of the young Quebecers — social exclusion at home and the promise of identity, purpose and adventure abroad — could apply to almost anyone who has been drawn in by radical Islamic propaganda, but some of the details are unique to the province of Quebec and to the east-end Montreal school that struggled to deal with the wave of attention last winter and spring, the report said.

The backdrop in Quebec was years of divisive debate over the reasonable accommodation of religious minorities and the Charter of Values, a proposal by the Parti Québécois government of the day to ban the wearing of religious symbols by employees in the public sector, it read.

In the cases that were reviewed in the report, charismatic religious leaders, friends and acquaintances—“agents of radicalization” — used these debates to support their claims that Muslims were being persecuted. This planted the subtle seeds of what would eventually become a radical mindset in youth who were in search of an identity and at an impressionable age, it read.

In the school, this translated into the appropriation by some students of a non-demoninational prayer space known as “The Source” and reports of “ideological preaching . . . dogmatic discourse and toxic discussions tinged with radicalism,” the report says.

Some students that the report describes as “more militant” were influenced by people outside of the school community who encouraged their sense of religious victimization. Those students in turn began imposing their religious views on others, the report says.

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As tensions at the school increased, the 11 students at the heart of the study began to distance themselves from others who had different views. They eventually dropped out of their classes in the middle of the term, despite being otherwise model students, the report says.

At the height of their radicalization, just before fleeing or trying to leave Canada, the report says they were motivated by the promise of living a “pure” Islamic life in Syria as well as the possibility of helping fellow Muslims living through war and oppression in that part of the world.

The report concludes that dealing with such cases will involve teachers, community leaders, religious officials, family members and friends acknowledging and responding to one underlying fact: “That a young person undergoing radicalization is a young person in danger.”

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