Infamously, War Criminals and Islamist Terrorists Find Haven in Canada

"The CBSA [Canadian Border Services Agency], subsequent media reporting, went and obtained an instance of this video from the dark web."

"It's part of the review we're asking ourselves you know, questions about the procedures."

CBSA executive vice-president Ted Gallivan 

"Those decisions were made with the information that [CSIS and CBSA] had available to them at that time. That's why we've asked [Immigration Minister] Mark Miller and I, for them to review a process that may be able to  yield access to certain information in a different way."

"We recognize the understandable questions that Canadians had when they learned following the RCMP news release of these arrests. I think it is reasonable for the government and for Canadians to ask how could this sequence of events ... take place and what can we learn from that sequence of events to ensure the very best measures are in place."

"The fact that these two individuals are in jail and face serious criminal charges reflects the outstanding work done by the RCMP and their partners."

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc

"What happened here is we were within a hair's breadth, minutes, hours, potentially days away of a mass casualty."

"I'm sorry to all the witnesses, you failed in your responsibilities to keep us safe. You didn't do your job. By the grace of God and good French intelligence, they are behind bars where they should be."

"[Canada's intelligence agencies should fire those who] didn't do their job."

Conservative MP Larry Brock

Canada’s public safety minister faced tough questions in Ottawa on Wednesday about how a father and son accused of plotting a Toronto terror attack ended up in the country.

 

Both the Canadian Border Services Agency and Canadian Security and Intelligence Service [CSIS] failed miserably in their function to vet individuals claiming refugee status in Canada, to ensure that they are genuinely entitled to haven in Canada, that there are no outstanding warrants for arrest, nor evidence available that they have criminal or terrorist backgrounds. The recent intelligence received from French agents alerting Canada to an impending attack by Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, who just a month earlier had been granted citizenship, and his son Mostafa Eldidi, resulted in their arrest.

The immigration screening process that is meant to ensure that Canada does not welcome would-be immigrants with unsavoury and worse backgrounds appears to be mired in incompetence. Little wonder that a recent poll concluded that almost half of Canadians oppose the Liberal government's plan to accept up to 5,000 refugees from Gaza who have family members already living in Canada. They are skeptical of the government's claim that such newcomers are screened thoroughly by government officials.

It was investigative journalists with Canadian media who conducting their own investigation discovered an ISIS propaganda video in which Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi featured. Immigration and security failed themselves to uncover the presence of the video that was available on the Dark Web, showing Eldidi engaged in what ISIS loved best to do; shock Westerners with gruesome videos demonstrating live crucifixions, decapitations and other modes of barbaric death-delivery to their enemies, mostly Westerners caught while ISIS was consolidating its geographic Islamist 'Caliphate'.

In this instance it was the morbidly grotesque views of Eldidi dismembering an ISIS prisoner. Investigative reporters took the initiative of visiting the Dark Web with a specific purpose in mind, but presumably seasoned intelligence professionals were too limp-wristed to make their own definitive investigations of discovery of a video produced in 2015. The father-and-son duo was discovered to have been in the advanced stage of plans underway to launch a violent terrorist attack in Toronto. It was only by means of the intelligence alert by France that Canada escaped a potential bloodbath.

A month ago, the RCMP announced nine charges against both men; participation in the activities of a terrorist group and conspiracy to commit murder on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant among them. Eldidi senior was given refugee status in 2018 and three years later became a Canadian citizen. The House of Commons standing committee on public safety and national security voted unanimously to investigate the flawed process enabling the terror-duo to gain entry to Canada.

Either CSIS or CBSA screened Ahmed Eldidi, 62, in 2018, 2021 and 2023 while the son, Mostafa, 26, had been screened in 2020. The screening resulted in "favourable recommendations". According to the IRCC, a temporary resident visa was approved for Ahmed Eldidi in January 2018, who then entered Canada a month later, via Toronto. A year later he was granted permanent residence status in September of 2021. Mostafa Eldidi entered the United States in January 2020 on a student visa, then crossed into Canada at a land border to make an asylum claim, and he was granted refugee status on July 2022.

"Jihadology.net, a U.S. website that catalogues Islamic State communiqués and propaganda, posted what appears to be the video in question on June 16, 2015 — the same day it appeared on an ISIS-affiliated website."

"CBC News has viewed the four-minute video, which features the interrogation of a bearded prisoner wearing an orange jumpsuit. The video shows the prisoner lit by a bright light and sitting in a cell as he answers questions shouted by someone off camera."

"After a section of readings from the Qur'an, the prisoner then appears hoisted on a wooden frame in the desert, bound tightly with load straps. It's unclear from the video whether the prisoner is alive or dead at this point."

"A man dressed all in black, with a cap that features the white Islamic State symbol, then uses a long, square-edged sword to hack at the prisoner's outstretched limbs. The man's red-bearded face is briefly visible as the video cuts from one angle of the attack to another."

CBC News

 

Palestinians for Peace and Good Governance

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it. [Jihad is] the individual duty of every Muslim."

"The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [holy possession] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day."

"No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part of it."

Hamas Covenant

 

"There will never be peace ... We'll take what you give, but we will never give up our armed struggle."

"As long as I, Sheikh Yassin, am alive, I shall make sure that there will be no peace talks with Israel."

"I do not have a time problem: ten more years, 100 more years -- in the end you will be wiped off the face of the earth."

Ahmed Yassin, Hamas founder

 

Any onlooker into the Middle East conflict between the State of Israel and the Islamist terrorist groups -- first the Palestine Liberation Organization and its various arms, now its reiteration in Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, and the even grimmer Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and lesser but lethally determined groups to obliterate the Jewish state -- who believes that reason and practical intelligence can prevail over institutionalized violence bred and led by the Arab/Muslim states that greeted the fledgling state in 1948 with a military welcome, suffers from inattention.

It is not possible to negotiate with groups dedicated to the eradication of a legally constituted state on the ancestral lands of its predecessors which welcomes a vast diaspora of people who have suffered indignities, discrimination, oppression, pogroms, exiles, and finally genocide over the millennia since they rebelled against an occupation of a foreign dynasty with a global reach. Fatah, which governs the area the West and the UN refers to as the 'West Bank', shares the Hamas agenda of re-occupying the land Israel sits upon, but it is far more discreet than Hamas; the former is secular, the latter religious.

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind rocks and tees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him'."

Islamic Hadith

When the founder of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, was imprisoned in an Israeli jail, he managed to control and order Hamas, giving the group instructions on how to proceed with their deadly agenda. Around 1992 the Hamas campaign of suicide bombing attacks began against Israelis. In 1992 a group of soldiers close to a West Bank settlement was targeted.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords, brokered by the U.S., meant to lead to peace and eventually, a Palestinian state. A situation that led Yassin to increase the frequency and deadliness of the suicide attacks. A similarity can be seen in the current situation, where Israel, with U.S. brokering assistance has signed peace agreements under the Abraham Accords with Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

The long-awaited rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which would in time lead to additional members of the Arab League joining the accord for peace with Israel, alarmed the Islamic Republic of Iran, which called upon its proxies to take action that would destroy any opportunities for peace agreements beyond that of Israel with Jordan, Egypt and the latter three states. What happened when Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets into Israel and Hamas broke through the separating wall to slaughter 1,400 mostly civilian Israelis was to create dire tension.

Thirty years ago, Hamas expanded targeting of Israel into Israel's internationally recognized borders to target civilians on commuter buses, gathering places, restaurants, on the street, committing carnage on a larger scale, in reaction to the Oslo Accord. Negotiations for a peace agreement in 2000 saw Israel offering self-harming concessions to the Palestinians in their eagerness to avoid an increase in attacks and hope for a cessation to all attacks. Only to be met with refusals, followed by more suicide bombing.

Yassin was finally assassinated in 2004, effectively martyring him as a celebrated figure of 'resistance' for Palestinians enamoured of deadly violence. The general view outside of the Middle East is that Palestinians who are exploited by their Hamas rulers in Gaza, and who become civilian shields when Hamas places rocket launch sites inside schools, hospitals, apartment complexes, and in other densely populated enclaves, fear and detest Hamas for failing to provide them with opportunities to prosper.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The 2006 Palestinian legislative election saw Hamas win 44.5 percent of the vote, giving them 74 of 132 seats. An election judged by international observers to be free and fair. A year and a half later, Hamas violently seized control of Gaza from Fatah, after Israel had pulled out all its settlements and its military presence, leaving the enclave to the Palestinians entirely. The struggle between Fatah and Hamas was violent and conclusive; Fatah outed and Hamas in control.

No follow-up election has ever been held. Current politics, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research saw its most recent poll in June concluding that "two-thirds of the public do not believe that Israel will celebrate its centenary (in 2048), and a majority, albeit a small one, believes that the Palestinian people will, in the future, be able to recover Palestine and return its refugees to their homes".

The concept of a two-state solution, overwhelmingly supported by the Western world whose charity has supported the Palestinian territories for the past 70 years, is supported by a mere 28 percent of Palestinians, with 70 percent in opposition to it. The Palestinian Authority is not favoured by Palestinians, half looking for its collapse, while 71 percent are in support of the formation of independent armed militias.

And while 69 percent of the Palestinian population would like to have an election, if one were held, 56 percent would vote for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and a mere 33 percent for Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. As for hopes of peace, 53 percent  percent of Palestinians are in support of a return to an armed intifada, with 47 percent in support of peaceful resistance. Overall, a population choosing to reject Israel's right of existence, believing that achieving a Palestinian state is only achievable through violence.

 

The Palestinian militant group has struggled to govern Gaza and remains committed to violently resisting Israel. Its surprise attack against Israel in 2023 threatens a wider conflagration in the Middle East. Council on Foreign Relations