Canadian cops raided a hotel room this week to arrest a father and son who were in just hours away from carrying out a mass casualty event.
The duo had gone so far as to record a video showing them brandishing their weapons in front of an ISIS flag while explaining their intended actions.
The family members were named as Canadian citizens Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, 62, Mostafa Eldidi, 26, were allegedly armed with an axe and a machete in the video. They were arrested on July 25.
Police say that their target was an unspecified location in Toronto. The hotel where they were taken into custody is located just 30 minutes drive from the downtown area.
They are each facing six ISIS-related terrorism offenses, including possessing weapons for the benefit of the Sunni-terror organization.
This screenshot from a surveillance camera shows heavily armed Canadian police raiding the home that the two suspects shared in a quiet Toronto suburb
Neighbors were shocked to learn of the pair’s involvement with terrorism and were awoken to the sound of flash grenades going off in the early hours of Sunday
Just this week, Canadian citizen Khalid Hussein, 29, was found guilty in England of being a member of Al-Muhajiroun, a terrorist group, and sentenced to five years in prison. He stood trial alongside hate preacher Anjem Choudary, who was sentenced to 29 years in prison.
Ahmed is also charged with aggravated assault that resulted from an ISIS video he is accused of appearing in that was shot in a different country in 2015, reports Global News.
The network reports that the video from a decade ago shows Ahmed, clad in a black robe with his face visible, hacking at an ISIS prisoner in an orange jumpsuit with a sword as the victim was suspended on a pole.
The video was shot in a desert and distributed by one of the ISIS media arms, Al-Raud Media.
The connection between Ahmed and that video was made through the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team.
Meanwhile officials in Canada have said that there is no outstanding threat as a result of Ahmed and Mostafa’s intended actions, indicating investigators do not believe that they were part of a larger cell.
Officials did not say if the duo were working with other ISIS operatives in different countries.
Despite decimated in their former strongholds in Iraq and Syria, officials have long maintained that ISIS activists are still active worldwide
Just this week, Canadian citizen Khaled Hussein was sentenced to five years in prison in the UK for his membership of Al-Muhajiroun, a terrorist group
‘As you know, they were charged with having particular weapons. In other words, we’re pretty confident how close they were to moving from simply having those tools and then moving on to actioning that threat,’ RCMP Supt. James Parr said.
The father and son lived together in the eastern Toronto suburb of Scarborough.
The home was also raided on Sunday night, reports The Toronto Star. Neighbors told the newspaper that they were awoken to a sound akin to a ‘car crash’ which is thought to have been a stun grenade.
Surveillance video from the area showed officers with assault rifles raiding the home. Later, an ambulance arrived to take a woman from the home.
‘I don’t feel safe at all to know that somebody in my backyard was (arrested for terrorism),’ a neighbor told The Star while adding that they hadn’t seen the family that much this year.
Another neighbor echoed that sentiment.
‘I feel uneasy, I feel very disappointed that this happened… This street is very quiet, it’s very secluded. Any strange car comes here, and we know,’ Hema Ramperasad said.
The neighbors said that they had previously complained to the family about the amount of cameras set up in their backyard that appeared to be focused on the surrounding homes.
The suspects were unknown to police prior to this incident. Officials have not said what prompted an investigation into the pair.
Nearly 40 members of ISIS have been charged with various crimes in Canada since the group was established in the borderlands between Syria and Iraq in 2014. Around 20 of those have been convicted, another 14 are awaiting trial.
Ahmed and Mostafa will make their first court appearance on Thursday.
A decade after the Islamic State militant group declared its caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria, the extremists no longer control any land, have lost many prominent leaders and are mostly out of the world news headlines.
Still, the group continues to recruit members and claim responsibility for deadly attacks around the world, including lethal operations in Iran and Russia earlier this year that left scores dead.
Its sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq still carry out attacks against government forces in both countries as well as U.S.-backed Syrian fighters, at a time when Iraq’s government is negotiating with Washington over a possible withdrawal of U.S. troops.
The group that once attracted tens of thousands of fighters and supporters from around the world to come to Syria and Iraq, and at its peak ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom was notorious for its brutality.
It beheaded civilians, slaughtered 1,700 captured Iraqi soldiers in a short period, and enslaved and raped thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities.
‘Daesh remains a threat to international security,’ U.S. Army Maj. Gen. J.B. Vowell, the commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve, said earlier this month.
‘We maintain our intensity and resolve to combat and destroy any remnants of groups that share Daesh ideology,’ he added.
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