BRAMPTON, Ont. - Suspicion and mistrust between two leaders of an alleged homegrown terrorist cell finally led to a split in the group in the weeks before police swooped down on them, an Ontario court heard Friday.

On his third day on the witness stand, an RCMP mole testified that one of the men viewed the other as a do-nothing braggart.

The trial had previously heard how the leader of the group boasted about importing crates of high-powered weapons that never materialized, and also talked about attacking Canadian targets such as the Parliament Buildings and beheading politicians.

"He really didn't have much to show for it,'' informant Mubin Shaikh cited the one man as saying of the other's talk.

He felt the other man was "exaggerating, blatantly lying about things,'' Shaikh testified.

At the same time, the second man viewed the first as a weakling whose loss to the cause was no big deal.

"He's a weak link. Screw him, we don't need him,'' Shaikh quoted the man as saying of the other.

"If you're in this line of work, you're bound to get some heat coming your way.''

Neither of the alleged leaders can be identified by court order. The identity of the accused, who is now 20, is also protected because he was 17 at the time of his alleged terror-related offences, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

The accused, arrested with 17 others in the summer of 2006, is on trial for what police allege was a terrorist plot. The arrests and allegations garnered worldwide attention.

Since then, however, charges against seven of those arrested have either been withdrawn or stayed.

The young accused is the first to stand trial.

During a wiretapped conversation played for the court Friday, the young man expressed interest to Shaikh about going to fight in Iraq against the U.S.-led coalition, but seemed to have little idea of the logistics in even getting there.

"I dismissed him,'' said Shaikh, who was paid more than $300,000 to infiltrate the group.

Shaikh also told Ontario Superior Court Justice John Sproat that the two leaders appeared to become increasingly wary about what he was up to.

"You look like a spy,'' one of the men said to him.

However, he said, they seemed more concerned that he was working for the other faction than for the police.

Court also heard how one of the leaders claimed that two Americans from Georgia, who were charged in the U.S. with plotting terrorism in Toronto, had stayed with him for two weeks. He also said he knew another suspect detained in Bangladesh.

"(He) was really freaked out. He said he knew the guy,'' Shaikh testified.

An al-Qaida propaganda video of Osama bin Laden praising the terrorist hijackers responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the United States, as well as attacks on Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was played for the court.

The material was typical of the kind one of the group's leaders would hand out on a computer disc as a recruiting tool, Shaikh said.