Driver left note to family, father says

TORONTO — A letter written by ISIL supporter Aaron Driver before he was killed by a police tactical team last week confirms he was about to conduct a suicide attack, his father said Friday.

“The police found it on my daughter’s bed, where he had left it,” Wayne Driver told the National Post. The family was given a copy Wednesday, the day before the 24-year-old’s funeral service.

The father said he would not be disclosing it publicly but that the note was personal and also an attempt to explain the violence Driver intended to commit, and which he expected would end his own life.

“He was checking out that day one way or the other,” the father said, adding Driver had let his family know he loved them. “It gives you some closure too, it answers some questions.”

Together with an apparent martyrdom video Driver had recorded, pledging allegiance to ISIL and telling Canadians they would be attacked, the letter is more evidence of his intentions.

A known ISIL sympathizer who posted online as “Harun Abdurahman,” Driver had been living in Strathroy, Ont., under the terms of a terrorism peace bond imposed by a Manitoba judge.

Early on Aug. 10, the FBI notified the RCMP about a video threatening

The police found it on my daughter’s bed, where he had left it.”

an attack on Canadians. Driver was quickly identified as the masked man in the video, and a tactical team was sent to his house.

A taxi then arrived and Driver told the cabbie to take him to Citi Plaza in London, Ont. But police blocked the taxi from leaving and Driver set off a bomb. He was then shot dead by police.

The incident has raised questions about the effectiveness of terrorism peace bonds, which police have been using increasingly to restrict the conduct of violent extremists and prevent them from travelling to Syria.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said this week the peace bond in Driver’s case had failed, and that he was considering making mandatory counselling part of the peace bond process.

A study by the University of Waterloo, “Talking to Foreign Fighters,” found that almost half of the 60 Canadian foreign fighters it investigated were from Ontario. Eight of the 19 Canadians killed in Syria and Iraq were also from Ontario, it found.