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When Canadians heard Abu Huzaifa al-Kanadi describe how he killed and executed people on a New York Times podcast, they were outraged.

Why was this man from the Toronto area not behind bars?

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Couldn’t police and other government officials hear him plainly say that he joined ISIS and killed for the terrorist group?

But, of course, Abu Huzaifa al-Kanadi was already known to police and they hadn’t charged him. Not because he had recanted what he told the Times podcast Caliphate but because like almost all of the other returning ISIS fighters, police were not able to collect the kind of evidence needed to convict in a court of law.

It is simply too hard for Canadian police to piece together evidence of what happened on a battlefield almost 10,000 kilometres away.

So when I hear the U.S. State Department ask for countries, such as Canada, to repatriate their foreign-fighter citizens and prosecute them, I am of two minds.