The lives of British children, and the risk of their death, is part of the algorithm of acceptable risk that our Western allies have taken--Richard Kerbaj, The Secret History of the Five Eyes
Asked if CSIS went too far and if there would be an inquiry, Justin Trudeau said 'rigorous oversight mechanisms' monitor CSIS operations
Ottawa is accused of covering up its handling of a double agent who smuggled British teenagers into Islamic State territory to join the terror group while he was spying for Canada.
Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, did not deny Ottawa’s work with an operative smuggling Western children to a dangerous battlefield, as outlined in a new book, saying that Canada’s spy agency must “be flexible and be creative” in the war against terrorists.
A book about Western intelligence agencies says that while police in Britain were searching for three schoolgirls who left their homes in London in 2015, Canadian intelligence and diplomatic officials withheld information about where they were and how they got there.
Canada then worked with British authorities to cover up its role, according to allegations on this long-percolating controversy in The Secret History of the Five Eyes by Richard Kerbaj, who was the security beat reporter for Britain’s Sunday Times from 2010 to 2020.
Canada was part of the military coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq at the time.
The book’s details are igniting alarming headlines internationally.
The information is particularly controversial in Britain because one of those smuggled teens was Shamima Begum, then 15, who remains in a detention camp in Syria fighting to return to Britain after her British citizenship was stripped from her because of her support for IS.
Part of Begum’s argument for returning is that she is a victim of human trafficking.
Tasnime Akunjee, Begum’s lawyer, told National Post that Canada’s actions facilitated human trafficking of minors.
“They have effectively been nabbing British children and trafficking them across the Syrian border for delivery to ISIS all in the name of intelligence gathering,” Akunjee said.
“Britain has lauded its efforts to stop ISIS and the grooming of our children by spending millions of pounds on the Prevent program and online monitoring. However, at the very same time we have been cooperating with a western ally, trading sensitive intelligence with them” as they worked with Mohammed Al Rashed, who claimed to be a spy for Canada.
“The calculation here is that the lives of British children, and the risk of their death, is part of the algorithm of acceptable risk that our Western allies have taken,” Akunjee said.
Begum herself recently told the BBC about Rashed saying: “He organized the entire trip from Turkey to Syria…. I don’t think anyone would have been able to make it to Syria without the help of smugglers.
“He had helped a lot of people come in…. We were just doing everything he was telling us to do because he knew everything, we didn’t know anything.”
Kerbaj said Canada’s role is well documented.
“There is absolutely no doubt that the Canadians worked on this and also it brings into question … about what role Britain played,” Kerbaj told TV news show Good Morning Britain on Wednesday. “The only way to get to the bottom of this is to have an inquiry,” with access to CSIS documents, he said...
The issue of Rashed’s role was first revealed in 2015 after the high-profile disappearance of Begum, along with schoolmates Amira Abase, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16.
The three left their homes in England and flew to Turkey to join the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, where they were met by Rashed.
Rashed then helped smuggle them into IS controlled territory. He was arrested by Turkish police soon after.
Turkish media reported in 2015 on Turkish intelligence leaks, writing that Rashed carried documents, photos, and videos revealing his activities, including a video — apparently taken by Rashed with a hidden camera — showing him with the missing British girls near Turkey’s border with Syria.
Rashed told Turkish authorities he built a relationship with Canadian officials in 2013 when he sought asylum in Canada. He said in a statement to police at the time he was offered Canadian citizenship in return for information on IS, according to contemporary reports.
Rashed’s police statement said he was working for CSIS and passed information through Canada’s embassy in Jordan. Postmedia reported at the time that the embassy in Amman was run by a former RCMP officer who was Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former top bodyguard.
Rashed was described as a Syrian dentist, also known as Mohammed Mehmet Rashid and Dr. Mehmet Rashid, who fled from Syria in 2013 during the civil war, moving to Jordan and then sought protection from Canada at its embassy in Amman.
A Turkish pro-government newspaper reported at the time that Rashed then travelled to Canada for several months before returning to the Middle East to work as a spy. He claimed to have helped 15 people from Western countries travel into IS territory while working with CSIS and being paid by Canada to investigate the flow of foreign fighters to the IS battlefields.
The Secret History of the Five Eyes widens what has previously been published about Canada’s relationship with Rashed. Five Eyes is the name of the intelligence alliance of five countries: Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Kerbaj writes that Rashed sent passport information, luggage details, photos, and other information to Canada, including details on Begum and her friends, according to media accounts of the book.
Canada, however, did not learn details of the girls’ travels until four days after they crossed into Syria, Kerbaj writes.
“For seven years now, this has been covered up by the Canadians,” Kerbaj told The Guardian newspaper.
...According to Kerbaj, CSIS didn’t disclose how al-Rashed was involved in smuggling three teenage girls aged between 15 and 16 from the UK into Syria to join the Islamic State.
“You always try to protect your sources and your agents and you don’t abandon them. It also stands up with what al-Rashed said, because he said that he was promised relocation,” claimed Kerbaj in his book.
“If they have agreed on his relocation and gone through with it, that is admirable and honourable. On the other hand, it confirms the cover-up and confirms their role.”
“Instead of providing that information immediately to the British counterterrorism authorities, they just sat on it.”
Lawyer Tasnime Akunjee representing the three girls has since called on the Canadian government to hold an inquiry into what exactly happened after two of the girls are believed to have died while abroad.
also
Troubling news continues to come from Canada under Justin Trudeau. On September 1, Jihad Watch ran the story Canada’s spy agency CSIS accused of ‘smuggling’ UK teens including Shamima Begum to the Islamic State. https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/09/cana ... amic-state
A week later came a followup: UK: Shamima Begum may now exploit slavery laws to escape justice after being smuggled into Syria by Canadian spy. Despite the shocking implications of this story, it is being largely ignored by mainstream media. https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/09/uk-s ... nadian-spy
The media did probe that one, as it was Global News that exposed the story in the first place. But follow-up was stopped by the Trudeau government, “because there’s almost no information available about the program, and the government refuses to answer questions.” The Trudeau government is doing the same now in this stunning case of Canada’s collaboration with the Islamic State.
The most senior intelligence officer in charge of covert operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service went to Ankara in March, 2015, to persuade Turkish authorities to stay silent about the agency’s recruitment of a Syrian human smuggler who trafficked three British teenage girls to Islamic State militants, according to three sources.
The sources said the officer, Jeffrey Yaworski, who was at the time CSIS’s deputy director of operations, was carrying out a discreet but high-level campaign to prevent the spy agency from being publicly blamed for using the smuggler as an operative. The Globe is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to discuss national security matters.
One of the sources said Turkey eventually agreed to Mr. Yaworski’s request, but punished Canada by limiting the number of CSIS agents operating at the Canadian embassy in Ankara. CSIS also promised that any further clandestine activities in the country would be conducted as joint operations with Turkish intelligence, the source said.
The smuggler, Mohammed al-Rashed, was arrested by Turkish authorities on Feb. 28, 2015, within days of when he helped the girls cross the Turkish border into Syria. His capture threatened to place Canada at the centre of an international incident, after Turkish media reported that he had shared the girls’ passport details with CSIS, and that he had smuggled other British nationals seeking to join the Islamic State.
At the time of his arrest, Britain’s Scotland Yard had been frantically searching for the girls, and Turkey was unaware that CSIS had an Islamic State double agent operating in the country.
Turkey never publicly confirmed CSIS’s involvement with Mr. al-Rashed after Mr. Yaworski‘s travels to Ankara. The sources said he visited Turkey at least two times to meet senior Turkish officials in the aftermath of the operative’s arrest. One of the sources said Mr. Yaworski was trying to put the operational mess “back in the box.”...
Ms. Sultana and Ms. Abase are now believed to be dead. Ms. Begum was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 and is now languishing in a Kurdish prison camp. A British court will hear an appeal in November from her lawyers to restore her citizenship.
Tasnime Akunjee, one of her lawyers, has since called on the Canadian government to hold an inquiry into what exactly happened.
Former CSIS intelligence officer Huda Mukbil said the agency failed to do a proper risk assessment on Mr. al-Rashed, because they were getting high-quality intelligence on Islamic State recruits from him, and maps of the group’s training camps in Syria.
”You work the sources and you pay them but you are also responsible for what they do,” she said. “We could have prevented these three girls from going.”
The information is particularly controversial in Britain because one of those smuggled teens was Shamima Begum, then 15, who remains in a detention camp in Syria fighting to return to Britain after her British citizenship was stripped from her because of her support for IS.
Part of Begum’s argument for returning is that she is a victim of human trafficking.
Jesus that's shocking. Shamima Begum is a very big name in the UK - she's trying to return to the UK but everyone hates her because she went to fight for Isis. If this Canadian dude set her up that's a big deal.
In July 2020, the Court of Appeal ruled that Begum should be permitted to return to the UK in order fairly to contest the Home Secretary’s decision by instructing lawyers properly. This ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom which, on 26 February 2021, ruled unanimously against her, reversing the decision of the Court of Appeal and preventing her return.
The information is particularly controversial in Britain because one of those smuggled teens was Shamima Begum, then 15, who remains in a detention camp in Syria fighting to return to Britain after her British citizenship was stripped from her because of her support for IS.
Part of Begum’s argument for returning is that she is a victim of human trafficking.
Jesus that's shocking. Shamima Begum is a very big name in the UK - she's trying to return to the UK but everyone hates her because she went to fight for Isis. If this Canadian dude set her up that's a big deal.
In July 2020, the Court of Appeal ruled that Begum should be permitted to return to the UK in order fairly to contest the Home Secretary’s decision by instructing lawyers properly. This ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom which, on 26 February 2021, ruled unanimously against her, reversing the decision of the Court of Appeal and preventing her return.
Yep, problem/reaction/solution. Secret agencies colluded with terrorists, so oops, terrorists must be given open access to western countries.
The information is particularly controversial in Britain because one of those smuggled teens was Shamima Begum, then 15, who remains in a detention camp in Syria fighting to return to Britain after her British citizenship was stripped from her because of her support for IS.
Part of Begum’s argument for returning is that she is a victim of human trafficking.
Jesus that's shocking. Shamima Begum is a very big name in the UK - she's trying to return to the UK but everyone hates her because she went to fight for Isis. If this Canadian dude set her up that's a big deal.
In July 2020, the Court of Appeal ruled that Begum should be permitted to return to the UK in order fairly to contest the Home Secretary’s decision by instructing lawyers properly. This ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom which, on 26 February 2021, ruled unanimously against her, reversing the decision of the Court of Appeal and preventing her return.
The other two British teenagers Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase are presumed/reported dead. Considering the role ISIS had in sex trafficking, including children (aka 'brides'?), one can only assume this story has a broader morbid context about what deals the CSIS and UK make with terrorist based human traffickers under the auspices of gaining human intelligence. (In no way am I implying that such activity is confined to those two countries). Edit: Western sources derided the Turks’ claims, the Bethnal Green girls disappeared into clutches of IS, and British columnists chided the police for wasting time on these willing “in-house whores” for IS, demanding that the authorities turn their energies back to the safety of “our girls”. Khadiza Sultana, still believing herself to be a British girl who made a horrific mistake, sought to return home, but was killed in an airstrike on her Raqqa building in 2016 before she could escape. Amira Abase, fully brainwashed, stayed willingly and was reportedly killed in fighting as the caliphate collapsed at the end of 2018 or early 2019. As groomed and trafficked teenagers, their deaths are forgotten, viewed as a tragedy mainly by their families.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... itizenship
I first learned about ISIS’ human trafficking from my friend and former interpreter Dakheel. He told me how his ten-year-old niece was abducted by ISIS fighters to be used for sexual slavery. Since then, the accounts of outrages perpetrated by ISIS against women and girls as young as nine, has only grown.
A 14-year-old Yezidi girl named Adeba, living in a small village outside of Sinjar, was trafficked by ISIS. With dozens of other girls, she was trafficked around North Iraq. At each city they stopped at, some of the girls were given as gifts to ISIS fighters, ostensibly to improve their moral by allowing them to rape little girls. This was after the ISIS commander got first dibs on them to take their virginity. Others who are not given away as gifts are sold at a slave auction in cities like Mosul, the opening bid starting around ten dollars.
On another topic of ISIS activities during that time, they were selling oil too, at good prices!
There are many articles out there about their reportedly best customer.
(wouldn't be the first time Israel found great deals on 'illicit' oil sources)
