Terror plots, now bomb arrests — Canada has a problem

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Taha Sleiman was arrested Thursday on a sleepy street in Niagara Falls. The homes along Beaver Glen Drive in the west end of this border town are typical suburban homes lined with trees that typically sell in the $750,000 to $1-million range.

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This is not where you would expect to find someone making bombs, but that is what Sleiman is now charged with.

A news release from Niagara Regional Police announced that the 21-year-old is facing one charge of “make, possess, care, and control of explosive device” and one charge of “unlawful possession of explosives.”

If convicted, Sleiman could face up to 14 years in jail for the offences, but he’s lucky he’s not facing life in prison which would have been the case with a different charge by police.

So far, Niagara police are not saying much about this case, calling it an ongoing investigation, but many are calling this another instance of a terrorist plot being thwarted in Canada.

Given the past few months, making that assumption doesn’t require a big leap of faith. It’s doubtful that Sleiman is facing charges of making improvised explosive devices because he was planning on robbing a bank.

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The announcement of his arrest on Friday came as the U.S. Justice Department was announcing the arrest of a Pakistani national who had been living in Canada but was travelling to New York state to kill as many Jews as possible in attacks on or around Oct. 7.

Whether Sleiman’s case is terrorism related isn’t known but what is clear is that Canada currently has a terrorism problem.

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Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, is a 20-year-old non-resident who interacted with undercover agents in the United States in an alleged attempt to plan a terror attack in Brooklyn. According to documents filed in a New York court, Khan conspired to obtain an AR-15 and other firearms plus ammunition to carry out his attack which he said he would do in the name of ISIS.

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The charging documents also allege Khan chose New York City because he said it has the “largest Jewish population In america,” that the attack “could rack up easily a lot of jews” and that “we are going to nyc to slaughter them.”

Thankfully, even though he was living in Toronto, he didn’t think to carry out his attack against the city’s significant Jewish community.

It was just five weeks earlier that the RCMP announced the arrests of 62-year-old Ahmed Eldidi and his 26 year-old son Mostafa Eldidi. Ahmed Eldidi’s case created controversy after it was discovered that he came to Canada and was granted citizenship despite allegedly being the star of a 2015 ISIS torture video.

Their plan, according to police, was to carry out a mass casualty event, presumably aimed at Toronto’s Jewish community.

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In July, we also saw Khaled Hussein, a 29-year-old Edmonton man, sentenced to five years in a British prison for being a member of a banned terrorist group. That sentencing on July 31 came just days after a fellow Albertan, 21-year-old Zachareah Adam Quraishi, was shot and killed in Israel trying to attack Israeli security forces near the Gaza border.

Quraishi had travelled to Israel specifically to carry out his attack.

On top of these terror plots, attempts and convictions we have a problem with people who clearly support terrorist groups like Hamas marching in our streets. We’ve had Jewish schools, synagogues and community centres shot at, firebombed and threatened across the country.

It was just two weeks ago that more than 100 Jewish institutions had bomb threats emailed to them.

Canada has a terrorism problem. The target is the Jewish community, and sadly it looks like there will have to be a successful attack before our political leaders decide to do something to address this.

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