The crest of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The RCMP will reveal a significant new terrorism case on Friday morning.
The police force has announced a press conference for its integrated national-security enforcement team will be held at 9 a.m. ET.
Sources say Canada's counterterrorism authorities have, for the first time, taken custody of an alleged foreign terrorist arrested abroad and brought that suspect to Canada for prosecution.
An individual is anticipated to make a court appearance in Ottawa Friday, sources said. Officials would not reveal his or her identity, alleged affiliation nor any other details on Thursday night.
For Canadian police and prosecutors, the case may represent a landmark use of the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act. The "extraterritorial" reach of this law, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, allows Canadian counterterrorism authorities to prosecute terrorism suspects in Canada regardless of where the crimes took place.
Such cases, which have become relatively routine in the United States, can bear an element of risk for the prosecution: Should it fail, Canada would be stuck with a suspect who cannot be held in jail despite having been alleged to be a dangerous foreign-based terrorism suspect. And such a suspect might not be easily returned to his or her homeland, under Canadian human-rights laws.
In the past, Canadian terrorism suspects who have committed terrorist acts in foreign jurisdictions and returned to Canada under their own volition have been successfully prosecuted under the Anti-Terrorism Act for both foreign and domestic crimes.
Such was the case, for example, in the landmark 2004 prosecution of al-Qaeda-inspired bomb-plot suspect Momin Khawaja, who hatched parts of his schemes in Canada, Pakistan and the United Kingdom.
The RCMP has also issued warrants for suspected foreign kidnappers of Canadian citizens – such as the al-Qaeda-inspired bandits in Africa who held two Canadian diplomats for ransom in 2009.
Colin Freeze