Canadian police searched a hotel room this week to arrest a father and son who planned to carry out a mass-casualty attack within hours.
The duo even went so far as to make a video showing them waving their weapons in front of an ISIS flag while explaining what they planned to do.
The family members were named as Canadian citizens Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, 62, Mostafa Eldidi, 26, were reportedly armed with an axe and a machete in the video. They were arrested on July 25.
According to police, their target was an unknown location in Toronto. The hotel where they were arrested is just a 30-minute drive from the city center.
They are each accused of six ISIS-related terror offences, including possession of weapons for the Sunni terrorist organisation.
This screenshot from a surveillance camera shows heavily armed Canadian police officers raiding the home the two suspects shared in a quiet Toronto suburb
Neighbors were shocked to learn of the pair’s involvement in terrorism and were awakened by the sound of flash grenades going off in the early hours of Sunday morning
This week, Canadian citizen Khalid Hussein, 29, was found guilty in England of membership 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 accused of aggravated assault stemming from an ISIS video incriminating him for his appearance that was recorded in another country in 2015, the report said. World news.
According to the network, the video, dated 10 years ago, shows Ahmed, dressed in a black robe with his face visible, striking an ISIS prisoner in an orange jumpsuit with a sword as the victim hangs from a pole.
The video was shot in the desert and distributed by one of ISIS’s media outlets, Al-Raud Media.
The link between Ahmed and that video was made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team.
Meanwhile, officials in Canada have said there is no serious threat from Ahmed and Mostafa’s planned actions, and investigators do not believe they were part of a larger cell.
Officials would not say whether the duo worked with other ISIS members in other countries.
Despite the decimation 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 United Kingdom for his membership of Al-Muhajiroun, a terrorist group
“As you know, they were accused of having certain weapons. In other words, we’re pretty sure how close they were to going from simply having those tools to actually carrying out that threat,” said RCMP Supt. James Parr.
Father and son lived together in Scarborough, an eastern suburb of Toronto.
The house was also raided on Sunday evening, reports The Toronto Star. Neighbors told the newspaper they woke up to a sound that sounded like a “car crash” and thought it was a stun grenade.
Surveillance footage from the area showed officers carrying assault rifles searching the home. An ambulance later arrived to remove a woman from the home.
“I don’t feel safe at all knowing that someone has been arrested for terrorism in my backyard,” one neighbor told The Star, adding that he had not seen the family much this year.
Another neighbor agreed.
“I feel uncomfortable, I feel very disappointed that this happened… This street is very quiet, it’s very remote. Every strange car comes here, and we know that,” said Hema Ramperasad.
The neighbors said they had previously complained to the family about the number of cameras in their backyard, which appeared to be pointed at surrounding homes.
The suspects were unknown to police before this incident. Officials have not said what prompted an investigation into the pair.
Since the group’s founding in 2014 on the Syria-Iraq border, nearly 40 ISIS members have been charged in Canada with various crimes. About 20 have been convicted, and another 14 are awaiting trial.
Ahmed and Mostafa will appear in court for the first time on Thursday.
Ten years after the militant group Islamic State declared a caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria, the extremists no longer control any national borders, have lost many prominent leaders and are barely in the world news.
Yet the group continues to recruit members and claims responsibility for deadly attacks around the world, including deadly operations in Iran and Russia earlier this year that left dozens dead.
The sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq continue to attack government forces in both countries, as well as US-backed Syrian fighters, as the Iraqi government negotiates with Washington over a possible withdrawal of US troops.
The group that once attracted tens of thousands of fighters and sympathisers from around the world to Syria and Iraq and at its height ruled an area half the size of the UK, was known for its brutality.
Civilians were beheaded, 1,700 captured Iraqi soldiers were slaughtered in a short time and thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities, were enslaved and raped.
“Daesh remains a threat to international security,” U.S. Army Major General J.B. Vowell, the commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve, said earlier this month.
“We remain diligent and determined to combat and destroy all remnants of groups that share the ideology of Daesh,” he added.