Two terror suspects confirmed deported

Weeks of diplomacy between Canada and Pakistan

• A Pakistani man accused of plotting a suicide bombing in Toronto’s financial district because he thought killing Canadians was his “path to heaven” has been deported, several sources confirmed Thursday.

Jahanzeb Malik left Montreal airport escorted by Canada Border Services Agency (CB SA) officers. Meanwhile, a second Pakistani man also deemed a danger to security, Mohammed Aqeeq Ansari, was deported from Toronto.

The CBSA declined to comment but Malik’s lawyer, Anser Farooq, confirmed his client had departed Canada. Ansari’s parents were summoned to a location near Toronto airport late Wednesday to see him off, a friend said.

The removals followed weeks of diplomacy between Canada and Pakistan, which was reluctant to take the men back. The deportations were delayed for almost three months amid a flurry of meetings between the two countries.

An official at the Pakistani High Commission in Ottawa said she had no information on the matter and could not confirm that her government had agreed to co-operate with the deportations.

While both men were permanent residents of Canada, they lost that status when the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB ) ruled they had been involved in terrorism and posed a danger to Canadian security.

A Toronto flooring installer, Malik arrived in Canada in 2004 to study at York University. After arrests for fraud and threatening his wife, he left for Libya. He said he was teaching in Benghazi but authorities suspect he was training with an alQaida faction.

According to the RCMP, Malik told an undercover officer he supported the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and wanted to detonate a car bomb in Toronto. He mentioned the U.S. consulate as a possible target.

Ansari was arrested days after last October’s terrorist attacks in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa. He was stripped of his permanent resident status in May after the IRB ruled he was a member of the terrorist group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan. He denied the allegation. Police seized a cache of weapons and ammunition from the Peterborough, Ont. basement where he was living in 2012. He maintained he merely collected them as a hobby but the IRB questioned “whether there was an underlying plan given that he also spent a fair amount of time at the gun range practising his shot.”