A 23-year-old man faces weapons charges after he was arrested under a “fear of terrorism” provision that was part of controversial new security legislation enacted last year.

Kevin Omar Mohamed is charged with possession of a deadly weapon and carrying a concealed weapon, according to a statement Saturday from the RCMP.

The Canadian Press reported that Mohamed’s charges related to a knife. Mohamed is a former University of Waterloo engineering student, who was last enrolled in the spring of 2015, school spokesperson Nick Manning told the Star.

Anser Farooq, Mohamed’s lawyer, said his client was arrested under suspicion of five terrorism offences but has not been charged on those counts. Mohamed appeared in a Brampton court on Saturday, and is currently in police custody.

Farooq said he does not know what prompted police to investigate Mohamed for suspected terrorism, and that it is possible his client will sign a peace bond to be released on certain conditions when he appears in court again on Tuesday.

The Criminal Code’s “fear of terrorism” provision was changed last year when the former Conservative government enacted Bill C-51. This allows police, with the consent of Canada’s attorney general, to arrest someone on grounds that they may commit an act of terrorism.

“While there was no indication of any plans for a domestic attack, we must remain committed to preventing individuals from travelling abroad to gain training and expertise that could be used in the planning and implementation of future attacks on Canadian soil,” said Supt. Lise Crouch in the RCMP statement.

Amarnath Amarasingam, a Dalhousie University professor who studies radicalization and terrorism and also teaches at the University of Waterloo, told the Star that he has followed Mohamed on social media for several months. He said Mohamed used a Twitter account with the moniker “Abu Jayyid,” which he confirmed by showing the account’s profile picture to a friend of the Waterloo student.

The Star was unable to independently verify any link between the account and Mohamed.

Tweets from the account included posts that were “very pro-ISIS”—the so-called Islamic State group in control of swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq—but these were deleted from the profile around June of last year, Amarasingam said.

After that, Amarasingam said he noticed a shift toward more anti-ISIS rhetoric, along with supportive statements for the Al-Nusra Front, which is linked to Al-Qaeda, and other rebel groups fighting the Assad government in Syria. Recent tweets from the account touched on the verdict in the Jian Ghomeshi trial and recent terrorist attacks in Brussels.

“He never expressed publicly anything about wanting to leave (to fight in Syria),” said Amarasingam. “In public he was more learning about different viewpoints about Jihad and the conflict in Syria.”

One tweet dated March 24 included a photo from a first-person-shooter video game, where a gun is firing at people in what appears to be an airport security line-up. The tweet said: “Where can I get the Brussels airport MOD on Call of Duty?”

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Amarasingam said he’s not sure what could have triggered Mohamed’s arrest, but said police sometimes use the “fear of terrorism” provision when they don’t have enough evidence to lay charges, but want to apprehend someone they suspect of having motives to conduct an attack or travel abroad to join an organization like ISIS.