Canadians could be in secretive terror group
KHORASAN: Al-Qaida unit recruits, trains Westerners
The day after the United States and its Arab allies launched airstrikes in Syria last September, President Barack Obama advised American lawmakers the targets had included “elements of alQaida known as the Khorasan group.”
Khorasan was described as a terrorist faction operating in Syria that had been set up by the senior al-Qaida leadership to recruit Westerners, train them and send them back to North America and Europe to conduct bombings.
Its highly secretive membership is said to include Kuwaiti, Saudi and French nationals — and according to a declassified intelligence report obtained by the National Post, federal officials are concerned that some of them are also Canadians.
“The Khorasan group may include individuals from Canada,” reads an intelligence brief that was distributed to front-line Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers after the air campaign began. A copy was released under the Access to Information Act.
“Members of the Khorasan group represent a direct threat to Canada and Canadian interests worldwide as they could conduct attacks against civilian passenger flights or travel to Canada with the intent to carry out attacks in this country,” it said.
While the debate over Canada’s counterterrorism measures has focused largely on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), experts and officials say its rival, al-Qaida, has exploited the lawlessness in Syria to establish a beachhead on Europe’s doorstep.
The Canadian government identified this as a “major concern” last August in its 2014 Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada, which warned that al-Qaida members were converging in Syria to “train other extremists for possible operations in Western countries.”
But the existence of the faction was not widely acknowledged until a month later, when the U.S.-led coalition began airstrikes in Syria that struck not only ISIL but also Khorasan compounds, bomb factories and camps.
The coalition has targeted almost 20 Khorasan facilities, a review of statements by the U.S. Central Command shows. The most recent was April 7, when a “tactical unit” in Aleppo was struck.
The Canadian government has said virtually nothing publicly about Khorasan, but in an April 30 speech, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney mentioned it, describing the threat posed by “the so-called Islamic State, Jabhat-al-Nusra and Khorasan.”
While some Khorasan members have participated in the fight against the Assad regime, their primary purpose is to set up training camps in areas under Jabhat-al-Nusra control and “recruit, train and task Western foreign fighters” to conduct attacks against the West, it said.
Overseeing this assignment was al-Qaida leader Muhsin Al-Fadhli, 34, according to experts. A Kuwaiti who stands just 5-foot-5, Al-Fadhli fought with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, learned to use explosives in Chechnya, and helped fund the insurgency in Iraq. He is believed to have been killed in an airstrike on Sept. 22.