A defence lawyer is seeking a discharge for a Montreal mother who tried to help her son flee Canada in the aftermath of the firebombing of a Jewish elementary school, arguing the woman acted like many parents would under the circumstances.
Gilles Pariseau says Rouba El-Merhebi Fahd was distraught when she phoned a travel agent in 2004 to book a flight to Brazil for her son, who had just been approached by police about the firebombing of a school library that destroyed 10,000 children's books.
Sleiman El-Merhebi eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to jail for the firebombing, which garnered world headlines and provoked heightened security at Jewish schools across the city.
Yesterday, his mother paid the price for the crime, too. She was convicted of being an accessory after the fact, based largely on evidence provided through extensive police wiretaps.
Intercepted conversations revealed that only three hours after her son had been approached by a police detective about the fire at the United Talmud Torah school, Ms. El-Merhebi Fahd phoned a travel agent about getting her son to Brazil.
She told the agent she didn't want a United Airlines flight through the United States, preferring a more expensive Air Canada flight via Toronto. Her son might leave that week or the following week, perhaps for three months, she said.
The ticket was never purchased and her son didn't own a valid Canadian passport anyway. But Quebec Court Judge Robert Marchi said that didn't stop Ms. El-Merhebi Fahd from being an accessory to her son's crime.
"The steps undertaken by the accused to allow her son to get to Brazil are to me sufficient to make her an accessory after the fact of the arson perpetrated by her son, whether she succeeded or not to reserve the ticket," he wrote in his judgment.
But Mr. Pariseau said Ms. El-Merhebi Fahd had acted spontaneously, never bought the ticket and deserved a discharge. Not many parents would hand their kids over to police, he said. "I think her gesture is a gesture that plenty of mothers - maybe not all - would have committed under the circumstances," he told reporters outside court. "It's not abnormal for a mother to do that for her son. I'm not saying she should do it, I'm saying it's not abnormal."
But Crown prosecutor Anne Aubé argued that while Ms. El-Merhebi Fahd doesn't deserve jail time, she should be sentenced to community service. A discharge sends the wrong message about the seriousness of the firebombing, she said.
"It was an act of terrorism. It was a crime against society, not just against one person," Ms. Aubé said in an interview. "She was an accomplice in a serious crime ... all of Quebec was afraid, not just the Jewish community, all of Quebec was afraid."
She said parents have a responsibility to instill proper values in their children. "Parents have a social responsibility and I'm not sure a reasonable parent would do that," she said, referring to attempts to get the firebomber out of the country.
Sentencing is set for Nov. 25.
Key to obtaining a conviction was whether Ms. El-Merhebi Fahd knew what her son had done when she called the travel agent.
Her son testified for the prosecution that his mother was unaware of his involvement. But wiretapped conversations between Mr. El-Merhebi and his friends indicated she knew full well. She saw kerosene containers at home and noted that his clothes smelled of gasoline, he told his friends. "She's panicking," he told one friend in a bugged conversation.
Mr. El-Merhebi had thrown a Molotov cocktail through the window of the St. Laurent grade school in April, 2004, as retribution for Israel's killing of a Hamas leader. The school tightened security in the attack's aftermath, although a spokeswoman said yesterday the school has "moved on."