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A Toronto driver accused of dismembering a prisoner in Iraq nearly a decade ago has become the first suspect ISIS member to face charges of war crimes in Canada.
An indictment filed in Ontario court has accused Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi of four counts, including torture and murder, under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.
The alleged incidents took place at the height of ISIS in 2014 and 2015. Three years later, Eldidi flew to Toronto and made a refugee claim that was accepted. He is now a Canadian citizen.
Global News public last summer that Eldidi, a former Amazon driver originally from Egypt, was allegedly seen in a 2015 ISIS video using a sword to chop off a prisoner’s hands and feet.
“This is the first national security investigation where war crimes charges have been laid in Canada,” the RCMP’s Ontario spokesperson said on Tuesday.
The charges are groundbreaking for Canada, said Prof. Michael Nesbitt, associate dean of research at the University of Calgary law school, and a leading expert on national security law.
“It’s kind of a big deal,” he said.
As far as he is aware, Canada’s prosecution service has never before used the war crimes charges against a suspect for alleged crimes committed on Islamic State territory, he said.
Previously, Canada has mostly used war crimes laws for deportations and revocations of citizenship. In 2021, a resident of BC plead guilty to war crimes for promoting hatred against residents of the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Eldidi was already charged with aggravated assault over the alleged incident in Iraq, as well as terrorism charges for what the RCMP said was a disrupted ISIS attack plot in Toronto.
But five months later, the Crown filed more substantial war crimes charges, alleging that the 62-year-old committed maiming and “injuries to personal dignity” in an armed conflict.
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The victim is not named in the indictment, obtained by Global News, but is described as a “protected person in a non-international armed conflict.”
The RCMP said the investigation was conducted by the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team in Greater Toronto. The charges were approved on December 11 by George Dolhai, Canada’s deputy attorney general.
Eldidi “went to court yesterday and is being held,” the RCMP said.
ISIS committed untold atrocities in Syria and Iraq, including the genocide of Yazidisbut in 2019 it lost the last of its territory to Kurdish fighters backed by an international military coalition.
Since then, not much has stood in the way right against ISIS members, including in Canada, where only a handful of those who have returned home after serving in the group have been prosecuted.
The majority of Canadian ISIS women who returned to BC, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec have been arrested on peace bonds that restrict their movements but are not a criminal charge.
Eldidi’s alleged crimes were recorded at four minutes video released in 2015 by the ISIS branch in northwestern Iraq. Titled “Deterring Spies,” it shows a prisoner confessing before being led to an abandoned area.
The prisoner is then shown suspended from a cross while a man wearing an ISIS hat hacks at his appendages with a sword. Prosecutors have alleged that the man wielding the sword is Eldidi.
Despite his alleged past in Iraq, Eldidi was able to fly to Toronto’s Pearson airport in 2018. His refugee claim was accepted by the Immigration and Refugee Board, and he became a citizen in May.
However, following a tip from French authorities, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP national security unit launched investigations.
Police arrested Eldidi and his son Mostafa, 27, after recording a video of them holding an ax and machete, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group.
The case has raised questions about holes in Canada’s immigration security screening system. The government has defended its actions but said it is reviewing the matter.
“The review is ongoing and more information will be communicated once available,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said in a statement last month.
At a standing committee on public safety and national security hearing in August, Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman asked how “someone like this, who is an alleged ISIS terrorist” was able to obtain citizenship.
“Do you really think that the system should work like this? Do you really think this is not a colossal failure of your government? ” she said.
The number of ISIS-related investigations has pushed up across Canada, with 20 suspects arrested this year and last, compared to just two in 2022.
According to police and experts, young people are driving the rise in ISIS activity as the terror group recovers from its 2019 defeat in Syria.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
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