Experts urge new anti-terror tactics
The RCMP thought Martin CoutureRouleau was on the right track when officers met the 25-year-old radicalized convert on Oct. 9, 2014. Despite a failed attempt to travel to Syria, he seemed to be coming around.
Eleven days later, he drove to a strip mall frequented by uniformed soldiers in Saint-Jean-surRichelieu, Que., and killed Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent. Chased by police, he crashed his car and charged officers with a knife before he was shot dead.
Following a similar scenario in Strathroy, Ont., on Aug. 10, which ended with the shooting death of ISIL supporter Aaron Driver as he was allegedly about to conduct a bombing, some experts are calling for changes to the way extremists are assessed.
In the Couture-Rouleau and Driver cases, the assessments were ultimately wrong.
Both men had come to the attention of the RCMP but were apparently thought to have softened their views and were not being closely monitored.
Former Canadian government intelligence analyst Phil Gurski said the cases point to the need for more thorough and regular assessments of extremists on the radar of security agencies.
He also said authorities must assume that extremists who claim to have reformed are liars until proven otherwise. “Absent that assumption, extremists will continue to dupe well-intentioned people,” he wrote in a blog post Tuesday.
IN THE WAKE OF DRIVER AND COUTURE-ROULEAU, POLICE URGED TO IMPROVE ASSESSMENTS OF SUSPECTED EXTREMISTS
In an interview, Gurski said terrorist groups like ISIL encourage their followers to use deception as a tactic. “My default position is that you have not deradicalized, you have not abandoned the cause, until you prove to the nth degree the contrary,” he said.
“I think it calls for a little more in-depth assessment and analysis of these guys,” said Gurski, a radicalization expert who retired last year after a career with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Communications Security Establishment.
“We have to come up with a system where assessments are being done on a regular basis,” he said.
The RCMP had been investigating Driver since December 2014. He was arrested in June 2015 due to his online support for ISIL and social media contacts with terrorists in the U.S., U.K. and Syria. Although his conduct was restricted by a terrorism peace bond, the RCMP said he was not under surveillance.
Last Wednesday the FBI tipped off the RCMP about a martyrdom video that spoke about a forthcoming attack on Canadians. The masked man in the video was quickly identified as Driver and a tactical team surrounded his home. When he got into a waiting taxi, police confronted him and he detonated an explosive device. Driver was shot twice, his family said Tuesday.
Couture-Rouleau’s father declined to comment on the similarities to Driver’s case, but his son’s intentions were also missed. Less than two weeks before his attack, he met with police and an imam, and neither saw signs he was at risk of turning violent.
“Here’s a guy that basically said, ‘You got me, thank God. I realize I went on the wrong pathway, I’m going to stop right now,’ ” Gurski said.
“In the case of Couture-Rouleau and Driver, they took this to heart: ‘I’m going to pull the wool over the eyes of the RCMP. I’m going to tell them I’ve seen the light and I’m a good boy right now and maybe they’ll stop looking at me, which will give my plan a chance for success.’ “
Several other Canadians, notably Hasibullah Yusufzai of B.C. and Ahmad Waseem of Windsor, Ont., were able to travel to Syria although their extremism was known to police, who apparently believed the men were responding to family and community pressure to abandon violence.
Prof. Lorne Dawson of the University of Waterloo, co-founder of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society, said better tools are needed to assess a person’s level of commitment to violent extremism.
“Assessment is the absolute key,” he said.
The Violent Extremist Risk Assessment tool currently used is a guide that rates extremists based on whether they score low, medium or high on 25 categories such as use of extremist websites, direct contact with extremists, identity problems and military training.
But it “has some weaknesses,” Prof. Dawson said. “It shows some potential but it’s got some real limitations. ... Everyone recognizes that we really need to get serious about developing better assessment mechanisms.”
He said the office of community outreach and counter-radicalization that Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has announced would likely take on the task. “They’re aware of this and this is probably one of the things they’re going to be pouring a lot of resources into.”
Canadian officials have also visited a new counterradicalization centre at the Australian National University in Canberra, which is working on the problem of assessments, he said. “We need to go beyond the existing tools.”