Man acquitted on terror charges is a security risk: RCMP

VANCOUVER – An officer in the RCMP’S national security division says the man acquitted of terror charges in a British Columbia court was no “couch jihadist” and was clearly becoming radicalized.

Const. Terak Mokdad told an immigration admissiblity hearing that Othman Hamdan is a security risk in Canada and should be deported. Hamdan is a Jordanian national whose 85 Facebook posts related to the Islamic State led to his arrest in 2015, but a B.C. Supreme Court judge later ruled the posts did not constitute terrorism. Mokdad told the Immigration Refugee Board hearing Hamdan’s case that he trans-

lated Arabic posts clearly showing the man was becoming radicalized. The Mountie says that he wrote two reports related to Hamdan’s case, but they were not admitted as evidence at his previous trial. After Hamdan was acquitted last year, he was detained by the Canadian Border Services Agency while he awaited a hearing on his admissiblity to stay in Canada.