He also said the national terrorism threat level for Canada remains at “medium”, where it has stood since the fall of 2014.
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The peace bond did not deter Driver from taking action and he was clearly able to evade some of the conditions imposed on him, Wark said. Police keep watch around a house in Strathroy, Ontario, Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2016.
Police said they acted to thwart an imminent “potential terrorist threat”.
“Among them, he wasn’t allowed to possess any object or logo that had the name ISIS on it and the most important one, not to contact or communicate in any way directly or indirectly in any way with any terrorist group or organization”.
The Islamic State’s news agency claimed Thursday that a Canadian man killed by police a day earlier was a member of the jihadist group and acting on its general instructions.
A spokeswoman at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada’s spy agency, declined to comment on the incident, referring all queries to the RCMP.
The federal Liberal government has committed upwards of $500 million towards various police, security and border control measures, as well as a counter-radicalization program ramping up this summer, said Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale. The FBI provided a screen shot and later a video of the masked suspect threatening a terror attack. Cabana said investigators are searching Driver’s home and another location in London, Ontario.
Deputy Commissioner Mike Cabana says police were in a race against time to stop a suicide bomber they feared was on the verge of killing innocent Canadians.
Driver died after he detonated an explosive device in the backseat of a taxi as police closed in on him, the RCMP said at a news conference in Ottawa.
He ended up exploding a bomb in the back of a taxi just seconds before police opened fire.
After being tipped off by the FBI, Canadian police furiously worked to find out who the person in the video was.
– At around 11 am, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police identify Driver as the man in the video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group. “The outcome, if we have not been able to apprehend him, based on his actions when he was confronted, could have been significantly more terrible”, commented Cabana.
This is the first terrorist challenge for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who made a campaign pledge to withdraw Canada from the combat mission against the Islamic State in Iraq and instead increase commitment to training local fighters.
Cabana says while Driver was not under 24/7 surveillance, he was being monitored.
Aaron Driver had prepared a “martyrdom video” and had a bomb as he got into a taxi when the RCMP moved in to confront him.
The ISIS sympathizer named Aaron Driver, 24, was killed inside a home in the town of Strathroy, some 220 kilometres west of Toronto. “I said, ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m not talking to you, ‘ and he hung up the phone on me”, Wayne Driver said. Both the Toronto Transit Commission and Metrolinx, which operates the Go Transit system, said they had been alerted to a general terrorist threat but there was no indication they were to be targeted.
“You still have Muslim blood on your hands, and for this we are thirsty for your blood”, he says.
In an interview with the CBC in June 2015, Driver was asked what it would take for him to reconsider his pro-terrorism beliefs.
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Driver was living with his sister and under court order not to use a computer or phone, as well as other conditions.
