A witness who testified at the trial of a Canadian woman accused of joining ISIS in Syria described seeing her close friend being “brainwashed.” Naveed Deol said that she and Ammara Amjad were once like sisters. But Amjad’s extremist rhetoric eventually became so preachy that they broke up. “It just wasn’t the same person,” Deol testified. Captured in Syria during the defeat of ISIS in 2019, Amjad is currently on trial in Brampton, Ontario, for participating in the activities of a terrorist group. She is the first Canadian woman to face criminal prosecution for allegedly living under the Islamic State in Syria while the terrorist group committed atrocities. He launched his case against the 32-year-old Pakistani-born mother of two on Wednesday following testimony from the RCMP officer who removed Amjad’s messages from his mother’s phone. Appearing as a Crown witness on Tuesday, Deol described her former friend’s sudden transformation, a change she attributed to Amjad’s first husband, Canadian extremist Bilal Khan. Deol said he met Amjad when their families lived in Montreal. He later moved in with the Amjads in Brampton while completing his studies. Far from being an extremist in her teens, Amjad came from a happy Pakistani-Canadian family, drank alcohol and took off her hijab once she left the house, Deol said. But in 2015, when the two met at a Boston pizza joint, Amjad said Khan had been sending her reading materials, that people were suffering, and that she wanted to help. Get daily national news Get daily Canadian news delivered to your inbox so you never miss the day’s top stories. Then Amjad asked Deol to take her to the airport. He said he would fly to Türkiye to meet Khan, who was already in the Middle East, he explained. Deol said he felt Amjad, then a 19-year-old Walmart worker who had never shown any interest in politics or current affairs, was going through an “existential crisis.” Although Amjad did not give specific details, Deol suspected she was heading to Syria to join an extremist group and refused to take her friend to the airport. “I was worried about his safety,” Deol said, adding that he feared Khan was deceiving a naïve teenager. “I felt like I had brainwashed him.” On March 17, 2015, Amjad applied to renew his Canadian passport and wrote that he was traveling on March 19. He allegedly crossed from Türkiye into ISIS-controlled Syria. Although she never revealed her location, she messaged Deol upon arrival to tell him that she had married Khan, a suspected ISIS fighter, and “was happy.” Story continues below ad “Bilal left today,” according to a message Amjad sent to Deol on WhatsApp. “I don’t know when he’ll be back or even if he’ll be back.” When Khan was killed in November 2015, Amjad took it in stride, Deol said. “She always knew he was going to die and she was prepared for it.” Amjad later gave birth to her son, but the baby only lived one day. Again he was fatalistic. “I’m happy. Whatever happens, it happens for a reason,” he said. More about Canada More videos Amjad allegedly married British ISIS member Hamza Parvez. But she didn’t tell Deol anything about her new husband except that they had two children. Deol, who said she was not religious, said Amjad would accuse her of being “blind” and not knowing anything, and that she needed to think about the afterlife. Over time, they lost contact. Deol said she was busy with her own life and had grown tired of the way Amjad talked to her about religion. When they reconnected, Amjad had been taken prisoner by U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters and was being held in a camp for ISIS families in northeastern Syria. “I guess whatever group he was in, he was done,” Deol testified. Story continues below ad Deol said Amjad asked her to send him money but she refused. She didn’t want to be associated with someone with extremist beliefs, she explained. “I just don’t know you anymore,” he told Amjad. He said he felt guilty for not warning Amjad’s parents that their daughter was talking about going to Türkiye. But she decided to let her friend go. She tried to message him one more time, when the RCMP visited her in 2020 and told her they were trying to bring her home from Syria, but Amjad never responded. Amjad spent four years in detention camps for ISIS suspects until the Canadian government brought her home from Syria in April 2023. She was charged with terrorism in October 2023. Story continues below. joining ISIS after the terrorist group emerged from Al Qaeda and seized parts of Syria and Iraq. While many died, several were captured during the defeat of ISIS in 2019. Canada has repatriated nine women from Syria, at significant expense. Two have pleaded guilty, but half a dozen others have not been charged. The Crown’s case relies heavily on Amjad’s own messages, which are mostly in Urdu, while the defense has questioned the accuracy of the RCMP’s translations. Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca © 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.