Balaclava identified Driver to police
Analyst noticed familiar mask worn in video
TORONTO• It was the black mask that did in Aaron Driver. If a police analyst hadn’t recognized his North Face balaclava, the RCMP might not have been able to get to the ISIL supporter’s home in time to stop his planned terrorist attack.
“I’ve seen that before,” the analyst said upon seeing the face mask worn by the ISIL supporter in a video in which he pledged allegiance to the terror group and talked about an imminent attack on Canadians, an RCMP official said on Saturday.
In an interview with the National Post, Deputy Commissioner Mike Cabana provided new details about how police raced the clock to identify Driver from a screen shot of a video the FBI had forwarded to the RCMP on the morning of Aug. 10.
“It wasn’t much to go by so they started looking at the picture and trying to compare but there was one analyst that actually recognized the individual, or at least the balaclava,” said Cabana, the deputy commissioner of federal policing. “He said ‘I’ve seen that before.’ ”
From an initial list of 11 possible suspects, police narrowed it down to five. But then an analyst found a news photo of Driver leaving court in Winnipeg wearing a black balaclava — just like the one worn by the man in the video.
“He said, ‘OK, that’s the one I remember.’ So then they started doing analysis of the eyes and the balaclava. Actually, it’s a North Face. So they were able to identify both of them are the same,” Cabana said.
Driver was living with his sister in Strathroy, Ont., under a terrorism peace bond imposed by a judge after the RCMP arrested him in Winnipeg in June 2015 over his online links with ISIL figures in several countries. But he was not under surveillance.
The RCMP received the full video between 11 and 11:30 a.m. “By then we were pretty sure. It looked like it was him.” The audio portion was sent to investigators in Manitoba who had spoken to Driver and they thought it was him.
“The moment that they narrowed down that they believed it could be Driver” surveillance teams were sent to his residence and workplace, Cabana said. While they still didn’t have confirmation, “we didn’t want to take any chances.”
An Emergency Response Team was also dispatched. “There was a significant number of resources that were on their way to Strathroy.” At 4:18 p.m., Driver left the house and got into a cab. Confronted by police, he tried to detonate his bomb and a tactical team shot him dead.
He had likely intended the video to appear online following his attack. Cabana said the circumstances concerning how the FBI obtained it were still under investigation and he could not discuss that part of the case.