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A key piece of evidence in a Toronto terrorism trial has been posted on a U.S. website: a video that shows masked men wearing winter camouflage fatigues while firing guns and waving a black flag, or marching in a snowy woodland.

The video was played publicly inside a Brampton courthouse earlier this year, but this is the first time it has been available on the Internet. The two-and-a-half-minute video shows a group of men shouting “Allahu Akbar” – or “God is Great” – while they raise a black banner on a hilltop.

The video forms part of the case against 11 Toronto-area men who were among the 18 arrested in 2006 and are accused of taking terrorist paramilitary training. In addition, a core group of alleged ringleaders is accused of a plotting a truck-bomb attack targeting government buildings in downtown Toronto.

One of the accused, who cannot be named was under 18 at the time of his arrest, is awaiting the verdict in his trial, which concluded last month. The others, who cannot be named under the terms of a publication ban imposed on the trial of the youth, have yet to be tried.

The video, which authorities say was shot by the suspects for propaganda purposes, was acquired in the Toronto police raids two years ago. It was played in public as exhibit in a related British trial this summer. In the United Kingdom, a British extremist who had interacted with members of the alleged Toronto conspiracy was convicted last month of being a terrorist propagandist.

Evan Kohlmann, a representative of the American non-profit Nine-Eleven Finding Answers Foundation (NEFA) attended the U.K. trial and acquired a copy the video after it was shown as an exhibit. The video was posted on the NEFA website.

The video shows scenes from an alleged winter training camp that occurred nearly three years ago, or about six months prior to the June, 2006, police roundup of the suspects. At the time, nearly all the suspects were in their teens or early 20s.

Court has heard the group had access to only one gun at the camp. In the video, a man shows others how to load a 9mm handgun. At another juncture, another suspect is shown firing a scoped rifle – which is actually paintball gun.

The group also marches through a winter woods, before at one point the footage strangely switches to a van doing circles in a suburban parking lot.

The only man whose face is identifiable in the video is that of Mubin Shaikh, the police agent who has since testified about how he infiltrated the group for the RCMP.

Music is heard in the video. In June, Mr. Shaikh testified that the group overlaid music atop of the winter training camp footage, as they intended to circulate the clips as a means of raising funds and attracting recruits. The song, he testified is “basically a call to arms… The voice is beautiful, the melody sweet, but the message is poisonous.”

Defence lawyers have argued the camp was so amateurish an exercise that it never rose to the level of terrorist training, and that many of the peripheral attendees were unaware they were being groomed as terrorists by more senior suspects.

Earlier this year, prosecutors dropped charges against several men accused of taking the training, concluding that in some cases the graduates of the camp weren't dangerous enough to merit prosecution.