Terror suspects are getting younger
COUNTER-TERROR OFFICIALS FIND TREND HAS WORSENED OVER THE PAST TWO TO THREE YEARS
A 15-year-old who robbed a Montreal dépanneur to finance his plan to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. A Toronto girl of the same age caught at a Middle East airport on her way to Syria. In Winnipeg, a terrorist offence committed by a 16-year-old.
Over the past two to three years, Canadian counter-terrorism police have found themselves investigating minors as young as 13 — members of the online generation engrossed in extremism, some of them turned in by their families.
“This is something that we’ve been seeing for a number of years now,” RCMP Deputy Commissioner Mike Cabana said in an interview Tuesday. “And not just in Canada actually. It’s in other countries as well. The same reality is there.”
The latest case emerged Monday, when the Public Prosecution Service of Canada announced a youth had pleaded guilty in Manitoba youth court for counselling the commission of an offence for the benefit of, or at the direction of, a terrorist group.
No further details were released except that the offender was 16 at the time. The offence carries a possible life sentence, although a youth would be unlikely to get the maximum. Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 25 in Brandon.
“Oftentimes what we’re seeing is it’s the family that actually approaches us to say, ‘We need help, there’s something going on here that we don’t like and we need your help,’ ” said Cabana, who overseas the RCMP’s national security program.
An extremist who had communicated online with Aaron Driver, the wouldbe suicide bomber killed by police in Strathroy, Ont., on Aug. 10, was a British 15-year-old, he said. The youth has since been convicted for his role in a terror plot in Australia.
Juvenile terrorists are not new. Four members of the Toronto 18 terrorist group, arrested in 2006 for plotting bomb and gun attacks in Ontario, were minors. But Cabana said the trend has worsened over the past two to three years.
He attributed the shift to the influence of social media as well as youths “looking for something to get involved in, looking for an identity really … I know how vulnerable they can be and how easy it is to influence them. And that’s the generation that spends most of their time online so of course it’s very concerning.”
In a few cases, police have dealt with adolescent extremists through terrorism peace bonds, including one for a young offender in Thunder Bay, Ont. In Toronto, police arrested an 18-year-old last September on a terrorism peace bond.
Intelligence analyst Phil Gurski wrote in a September 2015 blog post that while those involved in extremist violence were once in the 18 to 28 range, “we are seeing a worrisome development of late: a lowering of the radicalization age.”
“But I think there is a silver lining. The younger the radical the greater the chance of diversion,” wrote Gurski, who worked on radicalization at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Public Safety Canada. “As the radicals get older, the opportunities for success are smaller.”
Teenaged extremists may also be more likely to be detected. Assuming they live at home, their families will know if they have disappeared,
THAT’S THE GENERATION THAT SPENDS MOST OF THEIR TIME ONLINE SO ... IT’S VERY CONCERNING.
and may notice changes in their behaviour or that they have been viewing terrorist propaganda on the Internet.
“When they’re of that age, we have the ability to engage their family. And the family can be a little more influential than if the individual is 20 years old,” Cabana said.
“If they’re younger and we try to redirect them to more appropriate interests, then obviously the family is the first place that we go to.”