When the RCMP recently received information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including “a video of a man in the final stages of an explosives attack”, they reached out to law enforcement partners across the country and identified the man in the video as Driver.
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A suspected ISIS sympathizer was killed in the southern Ontario town of Strathroy by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Wednesday night hours after RCMP warned a potential terrorist threat, according to CBC Thursday.
The RCMP said: “We encourage Canadians to remain alert and to immediately report any suspicious or unusual behaviour to their local police or by contacting the National Security Information Network at 1-800-420-5805”.
Driver is originally from Winnipeg.
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.
The suspect is said to have died in a confrontation with police.
The FBI tip and cooperation among Canadian agencies was key to heading off the attack, Cabana said. Police say he planned an attack within 72 hours.
– RCMP deputy commissioner Mike Cabana at a news conference.
Driver can also be seen railing against western “enemies of Islam” and promising an attack against Canada. He also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as many other lone attackers have done.
He had been monitored for at least a year but had not been under surveillance.
Driver was arrested past year for associating with terrorist groups.
Police vehicle is parked during a raid on a home (not pictured) after they received “credible information of a potential terrorist threat” at a small community some 140 miles southwest of Toronto in Strathroy, Ontario, Canada Wednesday. Police swooped down on the home where Driver lived with his sister just before a taxi showed up and he got in.
Driver’s plot would have been Canada’s first incidence of domestic terrorism since 2014, when a gunman fatally shot a Canadian soldier and stormed Canada’s Parliament building.
According to Canadian media, Driver converted to Islam in his teens after a hard childhood and a split with his father.
“You will pay for everything that you have done against us”, he said, dressed in black clothes and a balaclava. In February, Driver’s lawyer and the prosecutor agreed to a peace bond, which imposes limits on a person’s activities, stating there are “reasonable grounds to fear that he may participate, contribute directly or indirectly in the activity of a terrorist group”.
A statement issued by the ISIL-affiliated propaganda outfit Amaq said, “The executor of the attack targeting police in Canada was a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to calls to target coalition countries”. He was arrested and released on numerous bail conditions eight days later.
The conditions of Driver’s peace bond changed last February and an electronic bracelet he had been wearing was removed, the RCMP’s Cabana said.
They said a suspect was identified and the “proper course of action has been taken” to ensure there was no danger to public safety.
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A spokeswoman at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada’s spy agency, declined to comment on the incident, referring all queries to the RCMP.
