The Crown's star witness in the Momin Khawaja trial testified Tuesday that he took the Canadian software designer to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

Mohammed Babar, a former al Qaeda operative-turned-police informant, said Khawaja seemed pleased at the opportunity to fire rocket-propelled grenades and light machine guns.

"He was excited and he enjoyed it," he told the court.

But he also testified that Khawaja didn't stay at the camp for very long.

"He was there maybe two to three to four days," Babar told the court.

Babar's testimony had been briefly halted over defence objections. Khawaja's lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, had argued that Babar was describing terrorist activities that were committed by other people and had nothing to do with his client.

But the judge in the Ontario Superior Court ruled against Greenspon's objection. After considering the objection for about an hour and a half, the judge decided it would be too early to decide whether Babar's testimony was heresay.

Khawaja faces seven charges related to a bombing plot uncovered in the U.K. A British court already convicted five people linked to the plot, sentencing them to life in prison.

Khawaja pleaded not guilty to all of the terrorism-related charges against him Monday, before Crown lawyer David McKercher gave his opening statement in the Ottawa court.

McKercher said a terrorist plot allegedly involving Khawaja would have caused "massive destruction and loss of life."

The plot was motivated by religious and political purposes, McKercher contended.

A London nightclub was among the alleged targets of the group of British Muslims of Pakistani descent that Khawaja is accused of helping in 2004.

The Crown alleges that Khawaja was the British group's explosives expert. Prosecutors said investigators who raided Khawaja's home found an arsenal of weapons as well as an explosives detonator for a bomb he is accused of designing.

The case is seen as a crucial test of Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act.

With files from The Canadian Press