A Toronto man has been charged with working with the Islamic State to support and commit terrorist acts after he and two other men were arrested over episodes that the police described as “offenses motivated by hate’’ directed at the Jewish community, Canadian authorities announced Friday.
Exactly what the man, Waleed Khan, 26, did or intended to do on behalf of ISIS was not clear from the charges issued by a special counterterrorism group within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The charges he faces, however, include conspiracy to commit murder and providing “property, to wit social media accounts, knowing that, in whole or in part, they would be used by or would benefit a terrorist group, namely ISIS.”
The charges were filed after investigations into two failed kidnapping attempts in the Toronto area earlier this year, the authorities said.
In late May, three men, one with a handgun and another with a knife, tried to force a woman into a vehicle in Toronto but were thwarted by a passerby, according to the authorities. A few weeks later, two women were chased by three men, armed with a knife, a handgun and a rifle, in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Ontario. Again, a passerby intervened, the authorities said, without providing any more details.
The police agency that covers Mississauga linked the cases. Searches of the homes of the three men turned up guns and ammunition, as well as high-capacity magazines, which are illegal in Canada.
Mr. Khan, Osman Azizov, 18, and Fahad Sadaat, 19, face nearly 80 charges, including attempted kidnapping with firearms, conspiracy to commit sexual assault, hostage-taking, and “other offenses informed, in part, by hate-motivated extremism,” according to a statement from the Toronto Police Service. Mr. Khan separately faces seven terrorism-related charges issued the mounted police.
“The investigation identified alleged offenses that were motivated in part by hate-motivated extremism with potential links to terrorism,” Chief Myron Demkiw of the Toronto police said in a video statement.
The three police forces involved in the case declined further comment, citing a court-ordered ban on publication of evidence.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times. A Windsor, Ontario, native now based in Ottawa, he has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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