‘ONLY ENEMIES’ IN CANADA
Deportation hearing told Jahanzeb Malik didn’t like Canadians funding fight against Islamic State,
After Jahanzeb Malik and his new Bosnian War veteran friend watched some extremist videos on Oct. 28, 2014, Malik wrote on a piece of paper: “Can you make explosives?”
On Wednesday, the veteran, who was actually an undercover RCMP officer, was testifying for a second day at Malik’s deportation hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board. Malik is accused of wanting to blow up the U.S. Consulate in Toronto and other buildings in the financial district.
Malik’s lawyer immediately seized on that Oct. 28 interaction during cross-examination, raising several concerns, namely: no recording or transcript exists of the interaction, only the officer’s notes, and the officer said Malik burned the pieces of paper on which he apparently wrote of his desire to attack the consulate.
The officer, whose name is covered by a publication ban, said he was told a week after the encounter by his handler that the recording had failed to capture the interaction.
“My submission to you is that you don’t have a fulsome account of what transpired,” Malik’s lawyer, Anser Farooq, told board member Andrew Laut, who must decide Malik’s fate.
The threshold for evidence and proof of guilt is much lower before the board than in a courtroom, a point Farooq made in his arguments.
The federal government, which wrapped up its case Wednesday, wants the 33-year-old permanent resident deported back to Pakistan. The final decision will be released by the board at a later date.
The officer, who befriended Malik in September 2014 as part of a Canada Border Services Agency investigation, testified that he told Malik that he could make explosives. He said Malik planned to detonate the explosives from his car and make a video in which he would take responsibility for the attack.
The board heard that after the failed recording on Oct. 28, the officer carried two recording devices, yet both inexplicably malfunctioned again during another interaction with Malik in January.
Malik was arrested on March 9 and remains in custody at the jail in Lindsay, Ont., where he watched Wednesday’s proceedings via video.
He would routinely show the officer videos of Islamic State executions and said the actions were justified, the officer testified. Malik supported the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris earlier this year and expressed surprise at the outpouring of grief following the shooting death of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial in Ottawa last October.
“How come that the public feels sorry for one fallen soldier, but they don’t care about the women and children their soldiers killed in Afghanistan?” the officer said Malik asked.
Farooq has maintained that his client exaggerated and even made up stories about training with Al Qaeda in Libya and taking part in jihad as a way to impress his new friend, who portrayed himself as a war veteran who had fought for the Muslim side and lost family members in the Bosnian conflict.
Malik testified last week he went to Libya for a little over two months several years ago to teach at a Benghazi school — information that is confirmed on his visa.
The government argued that he received the visa fraudulently and that it would not be difficult to infer that Malik was involved in extremist activities there, given the situation in Libya at the time and Malik’s own views expressed to the undercover officer.
“There are no civilians in Canada, only enemies,” the officer testified Malik told him, saying that all Canadians pay taxes that are used to fund the military and planes sent to fight the Islamic State in the Middle East.