ISIS suspect came to Canada on student visa in June 2023, minister says
Global News
The minister condemned the Conservatives for raising questions about Muhammad Shahzeb Khan.
A Pakistani man arrested in Quebec as he was allegedly on his way to New York to conduct a mass shooting at a Jewish centre entered Canada last year on a student visa, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, charged last week in an ISIS terrorism plot, received a student visa in May 2023 and arrived at Toronto’s Pearson airport on June 24, 2023, the minister told reporters.
“This is all that I’ll be commenting on this individual,” Miller told reporters. “It’s very important that we don’t comment and actually it’s dangerous to comment any further.
“Any defence lawyer is looking at elected officials in their comments about this case, salivating at any comment that is made that could be seen as compromising the judicial process.”
He said it was “highly careless” of the Conservatives “to be firing their mouths off again” about Khan, and that Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre’s advisors “should be counselling him to shut his mouth.”
Khan was arrested in Ormstown, Que., on Wednesday as he was allegedly about to be smuggled across the U.S. border to carry out a terrorist attack for ISIS on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel.
The U.S., which has been investigating Khan since last November, has asked for his extradition to New York to face terrorism charges. He was scheduled to appear in court in Montreal on Friday.
The 20-year-old Pakistani was taken into custody just over a month after the RCMP arrested a father and son, Ahmed and Mostafa Eldidi, for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack in Toronto for the so-called Islamic State.
