OTTAWA — The police in Canada have arrested a Toronto-area man who asserted he was an ISIS executioner, accusing him of perpetrating a hoax that he was concerned in terrorist actions.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police mentioned the person, Shehroze Chaudhry, 25, “claimed he traveled to Syria in 2016 to affix the terrorist group ISIS and dedicated acts of terrorism.” The interviews he gave to media shops, the nationwide police power mentioned, raised “public security considerations amongst Canadians.”
Sgt. Lucie Lapointe, a spokeswoman for the Mounted Police, mentioned that Mr. Chaudry was the individual featured extensively in “Caliphate,” a podcast by The New York Times, below the identify Abu Huzayfah. Within the podcast, he described in harrowing element his position in executions. The Occasions declined to debate its sourcing.
“The uncertainty about Abu Huzayfah’s story is central to each episode of Caliphate that featured him,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a Occasions spokeswoman, mentioned in an announcement. She famous that one episode confirmed that Abu Huzayfah had misled The Occasions concerning the dates of his journey to Syria and the timeline of his radicalization.
“The episode tells listeners what our journalists knew for positive and what was nonetheless unknown,” she mentioned.
However she mentioned that The Occasions had used geolocation to position Mr. Huzayfah on the banks of the Euphrates river in Syria.
Mr. Chaudry’s description of his terrorist actions created a political storm in Canada. Opposition members of Parliament pressed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s authorities to clarify why Mr. Chaudry had not been arrested upon his return to Canada. Beneath Canadian legislation, leaving the nation to take part in terrorist actions is against the law.
Till Friday’s announcement of the arrest, nevertheless, the police had mentioned little about their investigation, which concerned a number of different companies.
The terrorism hoax cost that Mr. Chaudry faces is generally used to prosecute folks accused of creating false bomb threats somewhat than fabricating terrorist pasts.
Mr. Chaudry, who lives within the Toronto suburb of Burlington, Ontario, is scheduled to seem in courtroom in November.
The Canadian police didn’t instantly reply to questions on what led to the costs. The power typically doesn’t touch upon its investigations.
Mr. Chaudry had been enrolled as a pupil in environmental research at York College in Toronto and the College of Lahore in Pakistan, according to his LinkedIn profile. He additionally indicated that he was working as an intern for Parallel Networks, an organization primarily based in Alexandria, Va., and at a restaurant in Oakville, Ontario, that a number of Canadian information shops reported as being owned by his mother and father.
