Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Ralph Goodale scrums with media before appearing at a senate committee on National Security and Defence in Ottawa on Monday, March 26, 2018. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood

The Conservative party is calling for the arrest of a Toronto man who has admitted to joining ISIS and executing an Iraqi Muslim before becoming disillusioned with the terrorist group and returning to Canada.

The story of the man and a general description of his recruitment by ISIS and his return to Canada first surfaced in a 2017 CBC report.

But it was revived Friday in the Commons, after the publication of a New York Times podcast series that included details of what the man did in ISIS training in Syria.

The CBC reported late Friday that it had contacted the man after the Commons question period proceedings, and that he recanted his admission to the New York Times.

The podcast, which appears to have been first posted two weeks ago, includes vivid descriptions of a mass execution of four senior Iraqi Muslims as part of the ISIS training regime in Syria.

The man’s name sounds as Hosefa in the New York Times podcast, while it is Abu Huzaifa in the CBC report last September.

The first part of the training regime, Hosefa says in the podcast by a renowned New York Times reporter, involved getting recruits accustomed to killing and blood by slaying chickens and other farm animals.

As the training progressed, several of the recruits were called out to execute four prisoners ISIS brought from Iraq, as the Islamic State was fighting its way to seize the city of Mosul.

Hosefa provided the details to New York Times journalist Rukmini Callimachi, famous for the stories she wrote based on thousands of pages of ISIS documents she recovered as the Islamic State fighters retreated last year.

Hosefa said ISIS seniors brought the “old men” wearing blue uniforms out to be shot, and the recruits had to do it.

“In Hosefa’s telling, he can’t pull the trigger,” Callimachi says to a colleague taking part in the podcast.

Hosefa told Callimachi he said to himself: “This is okay, the next stepping stone for me.”

“They looked like good regular Muslims, they had their beards, they were old and they were tribal guys,” Hosefa says in the podcast.

“Slowly you can do this, you are killing him for a reason, you’re justified, you can do this, you’re not going to be held accountable, they put themselves in this situation, they killed themselves, and you kind of have to just close your eyes and do it, you just shoot,” Hosefa said as he finished describing the scene.

“Did you look?” asks Callimachi.

“I peeked, yeah, I could see his head,” Hosefa replies.

“And then I kept thinking they’re middle-aged men, we killed them, and I’m just a kid.”

“They told us to take the rest of day off.”

“I threw up quite a lot that day, I couldn’t get the smell off, that stale, irony, bloody smell off of my hand. I kept smelling it.”

The CBC online report later Friday said it had reached Hosefa and he denied killing the man.

“I did not,” the CBC quoted him saying. “You can put me through a polygraph and it will prove that I didn’t kill anyone.”

When asked why he told Times reporter Callimachi that he participated in an execution, Huzaifa said, “I was being childish. I was describing what I saw and basically, I was close enough to think it was me,” CBC reported.

Hosefa also told Callimachi of whipping people, part of his police training job, who were found guilty of hiding weapons or alcohol or of adultery. The belt used for the whippings had metal studs sticking out.

“I gave it my all, I’d always feel bad but I gave it may all, again, I had my superiors hanging over me. They would scream, may God have mercy on me, stop, please stop,” Hosefa says.

He said he had seen blood only on TV before then.

There were between 100 and 115 lashes for each person.

“It would get on you, get on your clothes,” Hosefa says in the podcast.

Earlier in the podcast, Hosefa, or Abu Haisafa in the CBC report, explained how his estrangement and loneliness in school, as one of three children in an immigrant Muslim family from Pakistan, eventually led to his interest in ISIS after U.S. reaction to 9/11 and the killing of civilians by the government of Syria after the Syrian civil war began.

Later, Hosefa says he became further disillusioned when ISIS held a training session that focused on terrorist attacks against other countries.

The descriptions Hosefa had in the podcast are more vivid and detailed than his comments to the CBC.

News of the podcast admissions infuriated the Conservative opposition.

“Today, there is an individual that is probably walking around the streets of Toronto,” said Conservative MP Candice Bergen.

“He should be arrested today. He should not be on the streets in Toronto. If he can be speaking to the media, he can then be identified by the government, by the police and he can be arrested.”

“The Liberals, the prime minister, need to answer to this, where this individual is and why he hasn’t been arrested.”

Goodale told the Commons the government could not discuss security details in public.

“Canadians can be very assured that the government of Canada, the security agencies and police agencies of the government of Canada are making sure that they know all the facts that they need to know and they are taking all of the measures that are necessary to keep Canadians safe,” Goodale said in response to opposition questions in the Commons.

“The last thing that would ensure the safety of Canadians is to have a play-by-play commentary on security operations on the floor of the House of Commons,” said Goodale.