Cleansing Canada of Jihadi Threats

"Mr. Malik then began to recruit the undercover officer to assist him in making an explosive device that could be detonated remotely."
Jessica Lourenca, Canada Border Services Agency officer

"May the angels lash the faces and backs of those who perpetrated this crime [2007 storming by Pakistani military of armed fanatic Islamists at the Red Mosque, Islamabad] when they take their souls out, may their deaths be slow and painful and may they rot eternally in hell."
Jahanzeb Malik, landed immigrant, YouTube page

Farooq Naeem/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pakistani security forces began their assault on the Lal mosque compound before daybreak on Tuesday, just hours after talks broke down to end the eight-day siege in central Islamabad
Pakistani-born Jahanzeb Malik came to Canada on a student visa in 2004, to study at York University. Eventually he was sponsored by a Canadian as a family-class immigrant. Eight years later he was charged by Peel police with assaulting and threatening to kill his wife. Months afterward he was arrested for failing to remain distant from her Mississauga home.

He left Canada, returning by way of Pearson airport in Toronto a year later. When he was questioned by the CBSA and Canadian Security Intelligence Service, he explained that he had been in Libya, on a teaching assignment. He was given a conditional discharge on two charges he had pleaded guilty to. And a year later an investigation began, surrounding national security.

Posing as a former fighter during the Bosnian civil war, an undercover RCMP officer gained Mr. Malik's confidence. And the man informed the officer whom he took for a fellow traveller that he had attended weapons training camps in Libya, and was in full support of the Islamic State as well as al-Qaeda. The two congenially viewed videos of ISIS beheadings.

Voicing his enthusiasm for the exploits of the terrorists, and approving of the Charlie Hebdo attack, Jahanzeb Malik felt it his duty as a closet jihadist to enjoin his new friend to help him with the manufacture of an explosive device that could be used to bomb various sites in Toronto, including the U.S. consulate.

Arrested on March 9, following a six-month investigation by the RCMP's Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, Mr. Malik, while not having been criminally charged, has been detained on security grounds with the intention of deporting him to Pakistan. In the process of a hearing, the focus is on protecting the identity of the RCMP police officer who had gained Mr. Malik's confidence.

Islamic State instructions to its faithful are held to have been responsible for the two assassinations of Canadian members of the military last October. Those working within Canada's intelligence and security agencies to infiltrate the confidence of jihadis in Canada and to apprehend them before they are able to carry out planned attacks obviously require protection themselves.