The Phenomenon of Radicalization

"There are a lot of incidents that don't make it to the news where the RCMP and CSIS are preventing or identifying problems before they get too serious.
"For example, when information is obtained about, perhaps, a young Canadian who is on the path towards radicalization, often there are interventions Often police go visit families or spiritual leaders and say this young person is going in the wrong direction and there's an effort to make an early intervention.
"That doesn't mean we can prevent people in every case from going in some bizarre direction, but I can tell you our intelligence agencies are very alert to this."
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney

London, Ontario, has quite a large Muslim population. There are seven mosques in the city. The Muslim community organized a fair recently on security, inviting the RCMP, CSIS, Canada Border Services and other agencies to "bridge gaps and educate youth". They obviously missed Xristos Katsiroubas, Ali Medlej and another young London Muslim.

Nor have any of the clerics in London, Ontario had any familiarity with those names. It seems none of them had been approached by security investigators, even though the two named young men had fallen under suspicion back in 2007. One of the relatives of Xristos Katsiroubas, who converted to Islam as a teen, was troubled by what he felt he knew, and contacted investigators.

Evidently RCMP investigators had enquired again about Ali Medlej, according to a member of the Muslim Youth Association. And obviously, when making enquiries and conducting an investigation the authorities would have advised and spoken to the parents of these youths. According to the young men with whom these two went to high school, nothing alerted any of them to future problems.

Xristos Katsiroubas, from descriptions of him was a quietly retiring introvert. Ali Medlej was a robust, enthusiastic and happy extrovert according to character descriptions of the two from sources who knew them fairly well. They were two years apart in age, and two grades apart at high school, but they were obviously drawn together by an interest they shared. One that no one suspected the depth and sinister intent of.

They don't look menacing. Apart from an uncle's concern for a nephew who was behaving in a rather unorthodox and puzzling manner, no concerns appear to have been evinced by others.  Former teachers of Ali Medlej describe an intelligent young man with a good sense of humour and a friendly attitude. "I just remember him being a bright young fellow. I don't have anything but good things to say", said retired language teacher Neil Tenney.


"I woke up to the news this morning. For him to have any involvement like this was stunning". The 'involvement' of course, was participation and perhaps even assisting in the planning for and directing the execution of the Algerian In Aminas gas plant attack where for four days Islamist jihadists terrorized foreign workers, an episode that ended with their deaths, 25 other jihadists and that of 39 foreign workers.

A school acquaintance, texted about the deaths of former classmates was in disbelief. "He was a happy kid, as far as I remember. Even trying to play back in my head, trying to imagine him in that situation -- as I remember him, I can't see it happening", said Michael Melito of Ali Medlej. Of Xristos Katsiroubas he recalled an older brother.

The growing, and to many, puzzling incidence of home-grown young Muslim men turning to radical, violent Islamism and travelling to Islamist hot-spots in conflict has become a live issue of viral concern in Europe and North America. The Toronto 18 case was Canada's first real exposure to the situation, followed by many others, some of which planned violence abroad, others right in Canada to prove their Islamist credentials.

"There has been a significant increase in the number of jihadists travelling to countries in Africa and the Middle East, especially Syria. This includes dozens of people from the Netherlands and hundreds from Europe as a whole, many of whom are joining local combatants. Never before has so much travel to jhihadist conflict zones been observed in such a short period of time", Netherlands Security and Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten reported to his parliament.

Assistant CSIS director for policy and strategic partnership, Andy Ellis, in a November 2011 speech spoke of the modern threat of terrorism as not "just one of foreign terrorists penetrating our borders, but of violent extremists developing from within ... the complex, mysterious and frightening phenomenon of radicalization." 

The challenge to the security intelligence insider is, he said, "to talk honestly about the threat environment without being alarmist ... It's equally irresponsible to exaggerate the threats to Canada's national security as it is to minimize them."