Youths are driving a ‘resurgent threat’

On June 15, 2023, police searched a Calgary home and found an ISIS flag, three knives, bomb-making instructions and ideological tracts on killing gay men.

“I’m a member of ISIS,” the owner of the materials, Zakarya Rida Hussein, had written on Snapchat as he planned an attack during the city’s month-long Pride celebrations.

“Tomorrow my mission begins. It’s pride month.”

Since then, Canadian police have disrupted ISIS-related plots in Ottawa and Toronto, and arrested a man in Quebec who allegedly planned a mass shooting in New York.

ISIS is back.

Five years after it was defeated in Syria, the ultra-violent terror group is on the rebound, and poses what a Canadian government report calls a “resurgent threat to the West.”

A Global News investigation has linked the so-called Islamic State to a surging number of investigations across Canada: Twenty suspects have been arrested this year and last, compared with just two in 2022.

During that same period, four more ISIS supporters were convicted in Canadian courts for crimes committed earlier.

Fueling the ISIS revival are youths like Hussein. Twenty-years-old when he was arrested, he is typical of the latest wave of would-be ISIS terrorists.

According to police and experts, today’s ISIS devotees are younger and more immersed in social media and gaming platforms, where they are connecting with propaganda, recruiters and fellow extremists.

For Hussein, TikTok and Snapchat were the preferred applications, and he used text messaging to send threats to Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party of Alberta, court documents show.

“I’m gonna do a terrorist attack on you guys,” he wrote to the UCP. “I’ll kill each and every one of you … I’ll blow you guys up with explosive.”

“The Islamic State is everlasting.”

The counterterrorism investigation that resulted in his conviction also led to the arrests of three Calgary minors. One was only 15.

Meanwhile, police in Ottawa arrested a minor last December over a suspected bomb plot targeting Jews in the capital. His alleged accomplice was also a juvenile.

In August, another Toronto youth was charged with ISIS-related terrorism offences, and an 18-year-old from Morocco was arrested in Montreal in 2023.

The latest case involves a 20-year-old Pakistani foreign student living in Toronto, accused of planning a mass shooting at a Brooklyn, N.Y. Jewish centre on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

The same is happening in Europe, where three teens were taken into custody over an ISIS-inspired scheme to bomb a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna.

In Arizona, a 17-year-old ISIS supporter was arrested on Oct. 18 for allegedly plotting a drone attack on the Phoenix Pride parade.

Not all are so young.

In July, the RCMP arrested a former Amazon employee from Egypt and his son for allegedly plotting an ISIS attack in Toronto. The father was 62.

That same month, Kimberly Polman, a 52-year-old B.C. Muslim convert allegedly trained by ISIS in Syria was charged with two terrorism offences.

Nor is youth involvement in terrorism new.

As far back as 2014, a 16-year-old was arrested in Montreal for robbing a corner store to finance his plan to join ISIS.

But since the start of 2023, almost half the suspects arrested in Canada were under 21, and six were minors.

“We’ve certainly seen more prevalence of youth being radicalized, or even mobilizing to violence,” RCMP Assistant Commissioner Brigitte Gauvin, the head of national security investigations, said in an exclusive interview.

“And I would say again, it is a result of them being present on these online forums and encrypted platforms, and just continuously consuming that propaganda.”

Court documents show Canadian ISIS youths have used TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, Reddit and Facebook to communicate and consume extremist tracts.

Telegram, as well as gaming platforms Minecraft and Roblox are also “where people will approach young people and try to entrench them in their ideology,” Gauvin told Global News.

“We could even say that algorithms have a role to play there because once a person goes on a certain site or researches a certain topic, algorithms will often feed into what they view on a daily basis.”

“And it’s that increased consumption of propaganda, sometimes, that will lead to a person becoming radicalized.”

Researchers who track ISIS are also reporting the involvement of youths at earlier ages, likely because they are on social media and messaging platforms sooner than in the past.

“It’s definitely something that I’ve noticed,” said Aaron Zelin, a senior research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“It’s plausible that it’s because the Islamic State is using TikTok, maybe not in an official capacity, but definitely putting their content out there. And the algorithm allows it to spread.”

“And of course, the people on TikTok are younger and younger.”

Formed in 2014 by former members of al-Qaeda, ISIS came to prominence after capturing a large swath of Syria and Iraq, and then collapsed in battle against Kurdish fighters and a U.S.-led international coalition.

The last territory under ISIS control in Syria was liberated in 2019. But ISIS did not disappear, it just shifted to other parts of the world — and to the internet.

A top scholar on ISIS, Zelin said that after losing its self-declared Islamic State, ISIS created a global structure called the General Directorate of Provinces.

That allowed ISIS franchises in places like Afghanistan and Africa, where the terror group holds parts of four countries, to better co-ordinate operations.

The decentralized system made ISIS more resilient, and in 2022 it began to regain momentum, with the Hamas conflict that began in October 2023 fueling the fire, he said.

ISIS has also benefited from geopolitical competition between Washington, Moscow and Russia’s anti-western ally Iran, which has complicated intelligence sharing.

“The ideology never went away,” Gauvin said. “And one reason for that is the creation and dissemination of propaganda online.”

“Basically, it’s a generation where everybody does everything online. So that has helped ISIS maintain a virtual caliphate, if you wish.”

A review of recent Canadian ISIS cases shows youths were accused of consuming online propaganda spread by a handful of controversial influencers from Canada and abroad.

The ISIS branch in South Asia, known as ISIS-K, has also been ramping up online propaganda calling for attacks in western countries.

Two ISIS-K attacks this year, in Russia and Iran, are seen as an attempt by the group to put itself back in the spotlight and attract new followers.

The incidents showed ISIS’s “increased desire to expand their efforts,” according to a report from the government’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre, released under the Access to Information Act.

“Not only do these two attacks demonstrate the potential for a violent threat to the West, they also enable extremist organizations to remain relevant amongst international supporters,” it said.

“In particular, a high profile attack such as that in Moscow will almost certainly result in additional fundraising (possibly millions of dollars) or inspire individuals to attempt to travel to join the group.”

The report described ISIS as a “persistent threat” to Canada, and said the group would continue attempts to inspire attacks in the West.

“This could include contact with radicalized Canadians,” it said. But the most likely scenario is an attack by a radicalized follower of ISIS ideology.

Such an attacker could be “further radicalized” by the Israel-Hamas conflict, which had “possibly accelerated” the Ottawa plot against Jews, the report said.

At least one of the Ottawa suspects was in contact with ISIS overseas, and the arrests took place during a period of ISIS “calls to violence in response to the conflict,” it said.

Even before the current surge, ISIS persisted in Canada.

At just after 7 p.m. on May 29, 2021, Anand Nath walked into Chicken Land, a takeout restaurant in Mississauga, Ont.

Pulling a 9-mm handgun out of his hoodie, he shot the entire Akl family, which owned the establishment, as well as their delivery driver.

He missed only one family member, a 13-year-old girl who was doing her homework in the kitchen. The bullet hit the commercial fridge beside her.

The attack took 18 seconds and left Naim Akl dead. The others survived, despite having been shot in the face, arm, chest and eye.

Police traced the shooting to Naqash Abbasi, a 34-year-old Sheridan College grad who did charity work at his mosque and counselled youths.

He also had a history of violence, having fired up to 10 shots into the home of a woman who was about to testify as a witness against his friend.

Abbasi ran a company called TryAlinc out of a warehouse near Toronto’s Pearson airport. He had also pledged allegiance to ISIS, and his business was a suspected fundraising front for the terrorist group.

He had ordered the Chicken Land killings after learning that Naim Akl, one of his employees, was planning to expose the scheme to the authorities.

Both Abbasi and Nath were convicted, along with the driver of the getaway car, Suliman Raza, who had searched online beforehand for “sentences for getaway drivers.”

He learned the answer on Oct. 3: life imprisonment.

Since the Chicken Land shooting, the number of ISIS-related terrorism cases has increased dramatically in Canada, according to police, prosecution and court records.

Among those arrested were eight women who were part of ISIS in Syria, an alleged ISIS financier from Toronto and Abdul Aziz Kawam, who allegedly slashed the throat of a transit bus passenger in Surrey, B.C. last year, and then called 9-1-1 to report he had done it for the Islamic State.

The RCMP also investigated Khaled Hussein of Edmonton, who was arrested in the United Kingdom last year for his role in Al-Muhajiroun, along with the terror group’s leader, British pro-ISIS cleric Anjem Choudary.

Although weakened since its defeat in Syria and Iraq, ISIS carried on, said Antonio Giustazzi, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

“They kept trying and trying and trying,” he said. “And then this year has been different because they managed to score a couple of important successes, from their point of view.”

The attacks in Iran and Moscow generated widespread media coverage, allowing the terror group to show it was not finished, and to re-energize its fundraising machine, Giustazzi said.

“They have the feeling that they turned a corner.”

ISIS capitalized on the Hamas attack on Israel, calling for the targeting of Jews in a propaganda release titled, “And Kill Them Wherever You Find Them.”

Many of the plots since then have been carried out by youths, with one U.S. study finding that two-thirds of the suspects arrested in Europe were between the ages of 13 and 19.

“The average age of the international and domestic terrorism subjects we investigate is under 21 years old,” an FBI official said in September.

“And they’re being radicalized in only a few months,” said Nelson I. Delgado, the FBI acting special agent in charge for Newark, N.J.

With the same trend happening in Canada, Gauvin said parents should be concerned about the gaming platforms and social media applications their children are using.

“It’s important for parents, legal guardians, adults in authority positions to pay attention to young people and to be able to help them,” she said.

RCMP intervention teams are working with community groups, and engaging with those who have been identified as at risk, she said.

If someone is at an early stage of radicalizing, the teams will try to put a stop to it. Otherwise, police investigate, make arrests and help with de-radicalization.

“There are certain instances, though, where a person might be too far down the path, that intervention will not be effective,” the assistant commissioner said.

“But we certainly try to intervene where it’s assessed that we could have an impact on that person’s life. For example, if we take the case of minors, oftentimes we will use intervention as opposed to charging a minor.”

That depends on factors like family support, she said.

“We need that to assist us in engaging with the person and helping that person move away from mobilizing or committing an attack.”

For Mohamed Amine Assal, a Montreal 18-year-old at the time, police opted for a peace bond when they arrested him in March 2023, based partly on information shared by the FBI.

According to the allegations filed in Quebec court, Assal went to a mosque attended by Yemenis who supported ISIS, and came to reject Canada’s liberal democratic values.

The profile photo on his Instagram account is an image of the convicted British extremist preacher Anjem Choudary. Assal also used Facebook and Discord, but mostly Telegram.

In his messages, Assal gave advice on making explosive devices, translated ISIS propaganda, promoted “violent jihad” and advocated terrorism, the RCMP alleged in an affidavit.

“Mohamed Amine Assal advocates and promotes violence against non-Muslims,” the RCMP wrote.

The terrorism peace bond that went into effect in November 2023 required the CEGEP student to wear an ankle monitor for a year. He has not been charged with any crimes.

Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca