Diligence Where Due

"There is a real concern that new and evolving conflicts in the world may lure youth to engage in violent extremist activities at home and abroad. Canada, like all nations, has a responsibility to guard against its citizens travelling to areas of turmoil and participating in terrorist acts. ... We must actively work to prevent individuals from being recruited overseas to learn a terrorist trade."
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews

Algeria and Bulgaria are still involved in investigating terrorist attacks in which Canadian citizens were purported to have taken part. RCMP investigators were sent to Algeria and tasked with themselves taking part in an investigation to authenticate whether Canadian citizens were, as stated by Algerian authorities, implicated in the January natural-gas plant attack. They have since confirmed that the remains of two of the attackers identified them as Canadian.

They have divulged few other details. One survivor of the attack had described a blond, blue-eyed man speaking English with an accent identifiable as North American in origin. So one of the attackers might have been a convert to Islam. One of the men's identity was confirmed through fingerprints, leading to the conclusion that this man was known to police through a criminal record in Canada.

In the case of the Bulgarian attack against a bus carrying Israeli tourists, the Canadian citizen involved happened to be someone who had left Canada many years earlier, and had perhaps been converted to radicalism outside of Canada. What has given their recruitment great value to jihadist Islamists is their appearance as Westerners, their Canadian passports and their language.

"Is anybody there?" queried one of them, seeking out hidden foreign workers in the Algerian gas plant. Logically, a foreign worker hearing someone speak the international language of English rather than Arabic or a local or regional language or dialect more aligned as representative of an Islamic jihadist group would take from the query that a rescuer is at hand, compelling them to reveal their presence.

Bulgaria has recently confirmed that Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim terrorist group partly governing Lebanon, a creature militia of Iran, was involved in the bus bombing and the deaths of a Bulgarian driver and five Israelis. The European Union is cavilling over whether to place Hezbollah on a terror list, while the new information from Bulgarian authorities appears to be convincing Germany to list Hezbollah.

Thirty-seven foreign workers and 29 attackers met their death at the Algerian gas-plant. It seems clear enough that the original intention of the al-Qaeda-in the Islamic Maghreb-linked group was to blow up the entire gas-plant installation, with the hundreds of international workers included.  It was meant originally to be a suicide mission; the jihadists were to sacrifice their lives as martyrs to the mission.

The RCMP, having affirmed without doubt that Canadians were involved in the Algerian atrocity, will now begin a further, far more involved investigation, and this time in Canada itself. They will undertake a wide-webbed investigation that will include checking all background information about the two identified Canadians. This will include also interviewing all those known to be involved with the two men, from family members to friends to casual acquaintances.

And the search for information will include attempts to discover where, how and when they were recruited. The resulting data may prove, after an exhaustive investigation, to be revealing in its substance, informing security authorities and giving them a picture of what is happening in the circles in which such men normally move, with whom they come in contact, and where? Community centres, places of worship, prisons?

Minister Toews spoke on the occasion of a conference on countering violent extremism. Bill S-7, proposed legislation to make it a crime to leave Canada for the purposes of terrorism is also on its way through Parliament. It has now gone to the House for third reading. There is some controversy surrounding it's allowing a judge to compel testimony from anyone who is believed to be in possession of knowledge of an impending terrorist threat.

The NDP MP for Toronto-Danforth is prepared to argue the bill will exert inappropriate powers: "I am also very worried about discriminatory operation of these measures vis-a-vis Canadian communities that the government keeps identifying with extremism, and about the inadequacy of oversight and review mechanisms for use of these powers." This is the discomfort of those observing the wearing of a shoe that fits.

For their part the RCMP is in favour of the bill. Assistant Commissioner James Milizia last November was confident, he said, the legislation had adequate safeguards, and would permit police to halt extremists before they would leave Canada:

"We are seeing a consistent volume of individuals being radicalized who are looking to travel abroad to either participate in, train for, or conduct terrorist acts. The question is, once they've received training, what harm will come to either our allies or to ourselves if they decide to return to Canada? That is definitely a continuing concern for us."