The Toronto targets of a would-be jihadi
TORONTO • An undercover RCMP officer described Wednesday how a Toronto man told him he wanted to travel to Syria to fight with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant but decided to conduct a terrorist attack in Canada instead.
Jahanzeb Malik, 33, thought ISIL was “fulfilling a prophecy” and discussed routes he might take to join, but ultimately decided to strike in Toronto, the officer said. “Mr. Malik said several times, ‘We have to do something in Canada.’ ”
At a hearing to decide whether Malik should be deported as a danger to Canada’s security, the officer said the Pakistani thought an attack on Canadians was justified because they were an “enemy” due to their military role in the Middle East.
“He said that there are no civilians in Canada, only enemies because all Canadians pay the tax and the tax dollars are used to buy the planes that are sent to Syria and Iraq and are used to fund the military,” the officer testified.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police began its investigation after Malik returned from a trip to Libya in 2013.
Although he claimed he had taught at a school in Benghazi, authorities suspect he was active in al-Qaida during his time there and attended a training camp.
Under the direction of his RCMP handler, the undercover officer contacted Malik last September. His cover story was that he wanted to him to install hardwood floors in his home. After they met, the officer told Malik he had been a Muslim fighter in Bosnia and knew how to make improvised explosive devices.
On Oct. 28, after watching ISIL videos, he said Malik wrote a note on paper and passed it to him.
“Can you make explosives?” the message said.
“Yes,” the officer wrote in reply. “What do we need?” “Target?” “Doesn’t wrote.
“Calculation,” the officer wrote, meaning that the materials required to make the bomb would depend on the intended target.
“American embassy, financial district, Bay Street,” Malik wrote.
Malik then set fire to the paper and burned it in the stove, he said. Later, the officer asked if he was sure he wanted
matter,”
Malik to go through with it. Malik replied he was 90 per cent sure and the rest was up to Allah.
The officer said Malik wanted to equip his car with a detonation switch that would trigger the bombs. He chose the Toronto financial district “because it would definitely bring the Canadian economy down,” he testified.
Malik wanted to record a video claiming responsibility for the attack. The video was to say he had done it for the “entire Muslim population.” “My impression was that he was very serious about these conversations,” the officer added.
A landed immigrant who has lived in Canada since 2004, Malik was arrested on March 9 after a six-month investigation by the RCMP Integrated National Security Enforcement Team. He has not been charged with any crimes, but is being deported to Pakistan instead as a threat to Canadian security.
Under cross-examination, the officer testified that on the day Malik first raised the subject of the bomb plot, the device that was supposed to record their conversation had not worked.
After the equipment malfunction, he said he had begun using two recording devices just in case one failed.
Nonetheless, both broke down on another occasion.
“I don’t like it,” Malik’s law- yer, Anser Farooq, told reporters after the hearing at the Immigration & Refugee Board office in Toronto.
He said there was no indication the undercover officer had tried to get Malik to repeat what was allegedly missed in the key exchange.
“It doesn’t make sense to me, and then you buy two recording devices and you stick them in your pocket and they both don’t work?”
The undercover officer testi- fied out of view of reporters, who were banned from identifying him.
He insisted their discussions about religion and terrorism were initiated by Malik, who considered himself a “true believer” and repeatedly expounded his beliefs in an attempt to recruit the officer.
“He was supportive of both al-Qaida and the Islamic State,” the officer said. Malik spoke approvingly of Osama bin Laden, but said his “main inspiration” was the late alQaida ideologue, Anwar alAwlaki. While Malik wanted to join ISIL, he said he was known to Canadian authorities and that they might stop him.
Among the ISIL videos he played for the officer on his phone was one featuring a Canadian known as Abu Muslim, who was killed in Syria.
“He said that Abu Muslim died as a shaheed, he gave his life for Allah and gave his life defending Islam,” the officer said. “On a separate occasion Mr. Malik said that when somebody dies a shaheed (a martyr), he goes straight to heaven and on the day of judgment, the belief is, he will have the right to ask Allah to get his family into paradise as well and he would get 70 virgins.”
The IRB’s decision is pending.