Ottawa man on terrorism peace bond arrested
Allegedly had access to Internet
TORONTO • Fewer than two weeks after a judge imposed a terrorism peace bond on him, an Ottawa man is back in custody after allegedly violating the conditions he was supposed to obey.
The RCMP arrested Tevis Gonyou- McLean, 25, on Friday on charges he had broken his curfew on Nov. 1 and possessed a “computer with an enabled Internet connection” on Nov. 3.
Both would be violations of the 18 conditions an Ontario court judge ordered on Jan. 26 following an RCMP investigation into threatening and pro- ISIL comments Gonyou-McLean had made.
He was to appear in court on Thursday.
RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson said Monday that one of the lessons of the Aaron Driver incident was the need to ensure that those on terrorism peace bonds were complying with them.
Driver was shot dead by police in Strathroy, Ont., last August while leaving his home to conduct a suicide bombing he said was for the ISIL cause. He was subject to a peace bond at the time.
In an appearance before the Senate security and defence committee, Paulson said police needed “a mechanism to be able to validate” that extremists were obeying the restrictions placed on them.
“In other words, it’s nice to be able to say, ‘ Don’t use the computer.’ But if you can’t go in and check whether he’s using the computer, then we’re back to square one,” the commissioner said.
According to a court document, Gonyou- McLean was allegedly found at a downtown Ottawa apartment in “possession and control” of a computer with Internet access.
Police have gone to the courts for terrorism peace bonds 19 times in the past two years. Paulson said they were a “valid strategy” in cases where police lacked the evidence to lay terrorism charges.
But he said “we have to be, as a police force, smarter in how we manage these peace bonds,” which he said were “simply one tool in the box that we use and we’ve used increasingly to effect.”
“How does the state force the individual into some process by which his or her radicalized state gets examined and managed?” the commissioner asked the Senate committee.
Gonyou- McLean, whose father was in the Canadian military, has struggled with drug use and mental health i ssues, according to his family. Since his conversion in March, 2015, he has voiced extremist views about Canada.
Following his arrest on Aug. 12 for what police said was a threat to avenge the killing of Driver, he repeatedly breached his release conditions but told the judge at his peace bond hearing he would obey them.