Convicted terrorist Momin Khawaja declined to address the court Friday as sentencing arguments wrapped up at his trial in Ottawa.

The 29-year-old software developer was found guilty of several offences under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act last year, more than four years after his arrest.

The decision on how much more time, if any, Khawaja must spend in jail is now in the hands of Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Rutherford. He will hand down the sentence on March 12.

Khawaja was convicted of five charges of financing and facilitating terrorism for training at a remote camp in Pakistan and providing cash to a group of British extremists, as well as offering them lodging and other assistance.

He was also convicted of two Criminal Code offences — but not terrorism provisions — related to building a remote-control device to set off explosions. The Crown failed to prove Khawaja knew the trigger would apparently be used to detonate fertilizer bombs in London.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges and was tried without a jury.

Prosecutor David McKercher told the court Khawaja should receive two life sentences and a total of between 44 to 58 additional years in prison. That would mean no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

Defence asks for no more jail time

Khawaja's lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, argued he should get no more than a total of 7½ years for the seven offences. Since he has already spent almost five years in jail and offenders usually receive double credit for such time served, Khawaja has been behind bars long enough, he said.

The prosecution has portrayed him as remorseless, life-despising jihadist itching to plot violence, while his lawyer has depicted him as an angry young Muslim who wanted to fight alongside insurgents in Afghanistan, not kill civilians.

Greenspon reminded the court that Khawaja was not found guilty of involvement in the British bomb plot and that the electronic trigger — known as the HiFi Digimonster — was never actually used to set off explosions.

The RCMP found the Digimonster in a raid on the Khawaja family home in suburban east Ottawa.

Rutherford contested Greenspon's line of argument Friday, saying: "You can't lose sight of the fact that was building those things to be used for mayhem."

In a ruling last October, Rutherford concluded Khawaja was aware of the British group's purposes, and whether he considered those goals to be terrorism or not, he assisted the ring "in many ways in the pursuit of its terrorist objective.

"It matters not whether any terrorist activity was actually carried out," he said.

With files from the Canadian Press