‘NOT THAT KIND OF KID’
Mother challenges RCMP claim that her son joined terror group in Turkey,
Kevin Omar Mohamed is in jail because police allege he went to Turkey to join a terrorist group. His mother says it was an innocent family vacation; she and Mohamed’s brother were along for the trip.
So if the RCMP wants to throw her son behind bars, she says they should lock her up, too.
“If they want to arrest Kevin for going there (Turkey), then they should be arresting all three of us,” said Mohamed’s mother, Debbie. “He has done nothing wrong.”
The 23-year-old former University of Waterloo student was arrested last week and later charged with “participating in the activity of a terrorist group.” The RCMP alleges he went to Turkey in April 2014 to join Jahbat al-Nusra, an Al Qaeda branch fighting in Syria that the Canadian government considers a terrorist organization.
Speaking to media for the first time, his mother told the Star she and her sons had been planning the trip for a long time before they visited the country in 2014.
According to Debbie, Mohamed went ahead a week early but was later joined by her and her eldest son, who had stayed back to write an exam.
The family stopped in Istanbul and then Antakya, which is near the Syrian border, during their month-long visit. They spent time at tourist attractions, and gave donations and worked with charity groups helping refugees, Debbie Mohamed said.
Numerous sources have connected Mohamed with a Twitter account using the handle “Abu Jayyid,” which included statements supporting the al-Nusra Front, a group that has been linked to Al Qaeda.
One tweet, dated March 24, included a screenshot from a video game, with a gun firing at people in what appears to be an airport security lineup. The tweet said: “Where can I get the Brussels airport MOD on Call of Duty?”
She described her son as a “religious boy” but said that, as far as she was aware, he was not connected with any terrorist group or involved in spreading terrorist views online.
“I don’t know if he is this person they say he is, I have no proof to know,” she said. “I know that he has some different views about things, but other people have put a lot of things on the Internet and they haven’t been picked up for that.”
“I raised my kids to be very law-abiding, to be very respectful of other people’s religions and cultures. Kevin never had one bad thing to say about any other religion.” DEBBIE MOHAMED
She said the situation surrounding her son “escalated” after she had an argument with him and she didn’t hear from him for a week.
She reported to police that her son was missing, but blamed his disappearance on herself being an “overprotective” mother, not radicalization.
“After he went missing, you see all kinds of things on TV and of course you kind of think . . . but no, he contacted me a few days later.”
Asked what she meant by “seeing things on TV,” She refused to expand on the comment, other than saying, “He was not that kind of kid.”
In a court document released Wednesday, the RCMP officer who arrested Mohamed last week outlined some of the suspicions police had before they laid the terrorism charge on Tuesday.
Sgt. Adam MacIntosh swore before a judge that he had “reasonable grounds to fear” that Mohamed might travel to participate in the activity of a terrorist group, advocate or promote terrorist offences, and facilitate the activity of a terrorist group. MacIntosh asked a judge to impose unspecified conditions on Kevin for one year under a peace bond.
That application was withdrawn Tuesday, when Mohamed was criminally charged. Mohamed faces a single terrorism-related charge — participation — as well as two weapons offences that relate to possession of a hunting knife.
When asked if her son could have joined a terrorist group during the visit to Turkey, Debbie Mohamed denied it emphatically.
“How could he be training if he was with me?” she said.
“I raised my kids to be very lawabiding, to be very respectful of other people’s religions and cultures. Kevin never had one bad thing to say about any other religion or anything like that.”
Mohamed’s lawyer, Anser Farooq, said Wednesday that it’s still too early to talk about how his client will plead to the charges, because he hasn’t seen the Crown’s evidence. He added that it’s possible more charges are coming.
Mohamed is scheduled to appear in court for a bail hearing on April 19.