The superstars of Canada’s radical Islamic community turned out at the courthouse in Brampton, Ontario, to support their brothers accused of planning mass murder: A gathering of familiar faces at Brampton courthouse.

The subject matter isn’t the only disturbing thing about this report; note Globe and Mail journalist Colin Freeze’s bizarre sympathy for the jihadis.

BRAMPTON — Canada’s hard-line Muslims can seem a pretty tight-knit group at times. As a long line of completely new terrorism suspects were being shuffled in and out of the prisoner’s box, there were many familiar faces looking on in the courtroom.

In the visitors’ gallery Saturday morning sat Zaynab Khadr, the sister of Abdullah Khadr, who is fighting extradition to the United States. He is accused of supplying weapons to al-Qaeda.

Ms. Khadr, who once expressed an admiration for suicide bombers on national TV, sat looking at the prisoner’s box, speaking Arabic with Aly Hindy, a controversial fundamentalist preacher.

Having had many of their own run-ins with the RCMP and CSIS, Ms. Khadr and Mr. Hindy were intent on doing what they could for the families of the newly accused.

One such man was Tariq Abdelhaleem. “Hello,” he said, looking shattered beyond words, as a reporter approached. “It’s my son.”

This was stunning. I had gotten to know Mr. Abdelhaleem last year, after he issued a controversial fatwa against too much innovation in Islam. The imam was worried that Toronto’s Muslims were not sticking to scripture and were also becoming unmindful of the real problems in the world. “Our Muslim brothers and sisters are dying in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya and other parts of the world,” he had written at the time on his website. “The puppet systems that are in power in the Islamic world are collaborating with the Crusaders and Zionists to keep the ummah [Muslim community] under oppression.”

I wrote an article on the fatwa and quoted a more moderate Muslim leader as saying that the decree was “stupid.” Mr. Abdelhaleem was stung by this. A few months later, he invited me over for tea and cookies, and we had a pleasant chat about religion in his Mississauga home.

It was in the basement that I met his son Shareef, and several of his friends, all young professionals eager to express their own views to a non-Muslim writer. They, too, were outraged by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. And they wanted to discuss racial profiling.

They were all upset, but they never appeared extremist. Now, one year later, 30-year-old Shareef Abdelhaleem was chained to other suspects, his anxious eyes meeting his father’s wounded gaze in court.

Meanwhile, more anxious terrorists are expected soon.