Why is an ISIL killer at loose?
Self-confessed militant walks our streets
Listening to the New York Times Caliphate podcast is a harrowing experience. The most recent episodes feature a Canadian ISIL fighter, recounting in graphic detail how he executed two men in cold blood.
Abu Huzaifa al-Kanadi, his nom de guerre, talked in a disconcertingly bland North American accent about being taught how to behead people. “You had to know how to slice a head off,” he said.
He then depicted a group execution, in which he shot a middle-aged Muslim man in the back of the head. “It’s justified — you’re not going to be held accountable,” he said he told himself. On another occasion, he took part in a community killing, stabbing a drug dealer in the heart. “The blood was warm and it sprayed everywhere,” he said. “I had to stab him multiple times.”
He said the second killing left him feeling “disgusted” and determined to return to his parents in Canada. He escaped to Turkey, and then on to his grandparents’ home in Pakistan. He eventually made his way home to Canada, telling immigration authorities at the airport that he’d spent the past 10 months at university in Pakistan. “I said it in a way so that it didn’t seem I was lying,” he said.
The only positive in all this is that he said he would never return to a life of violence. “No, I’ve come too far from it,” he said.
But, regardless of his conversion to a more harmonious world-view, it should not be overlooked that there is a self-confessed killer on the loose in Canada’s biggest city — one who lied to immigration officials to get into the country.
The case was raised in the House of Commons on Friday, the day after the podcast was released. Conservative MP Candice Bergen wondered how the government is not doing something about an individual who speaks so freely to the media.
Ralph Goodale, the Public Safety Minister, said he couldn’t discuss operational matters on the floor of the House but that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP are “taking all the necessary steps to ensure that justice is enforced”. Let’s hope that Huzaifa has said enough to incriminate himself and that he is made to answer for his crimes.
Not all cases are as open and shut. As Global News’ Stewart Bell revealed Monday, Canada’s strategy for managing returning jihadis is fraught with problems. Documents released to Bell under the Access to Information Act suggest that criminal charges are unlikely to be brought against returning ISIL fighters because they require evidence of the individual’s activity in the war-zone, or because they rely on information provided by partners that the RCMP is not authorized to disclose in court. This is the “intelligence to evidence” conundrum that has meant only a couple of prosecutions have proceeded in recent years. The government says around 60 Canadian extremists have returned from Syria and Iraq, although academic Amarnath Amarasingam claims the figure is much lower — “no more than 10 at most”.
The United Kingdom has revoked the citizenship of ISIL fighters so they can’t return, while other countries like France and the U.S. have tried to make sure that any foreign fighters who joined ISIL die on the battlefield. But Canadians have a “right to return”, according to the briefing note provided for Goodale. “Therefore, even if a Canadian engaged in terrorist activity abroad, the government must facilitate their return to Canada,” the document says.
The returning terrorists are managed by a group within government called the High Risk Returnee Interdepartmental Taskforce, which tries to mitigate the threat.
The RCMP document obtained by Bell suggests officers may travel overseas to collect evidence, or undercover officers could engage with the returnee to collect evidence and monitor them. The RCMP can send intervention teams to engage with the returnee and their family, to help them disengage from their past behaviour.
The hope is that, like Huzaifa, they have become disillusioned with their cause.
But the documents offer a stark assessment — some terrorists do not fear prosecution or death.
The Charter changes everything in Canada. British defence secretary Gavin Williamson sparked a debate in the U.K. after he said a “dead terrorist can’t cause any harm to Britain”. Opinion polls suggested that 35 per cent of Britons felt jihadis should be treated as enemy combatants, making them legitimate targets, 42 per cent favoured stripping them of citizenship and only 11 per cent said they should be brought home to face sentencing and rehabilitation. With the first two options off the table for the Canadian government, prosecution, monitoring and rehabilitation are the only tools left in the kit.
The vast majority of Canadians favour prosecution but cautious intelligence agencies and wary prosecutors mean the Public Prosecution Service has only charged two individuals to date.
The Huzaifa case is surely an opportunity to improve that strike rate. Contrary to his own assertion as he pulled the trigger, the law demands he is held accountable.
If the justice system won’t prosecute in such an apparent slam-dunk case, what chance convictions in more contentious litigation?