Article content continued

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

The action means Canadian fighters in Syria and Iraq may effectively be stranded there. Their passports are no longer valid and therefore cannot be used to return to Canada. Nor could they be used to travel elsewhere.

This week the Post revealed the identity of another Canadian with the Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS). Mohammed Ali, a 23-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., left Canada in April and later wrote online about playing soccer with severed heads.

Other Canadians allegedly with ISIS and similar extremist groups in the region include Hasibullah Yusifzai of Burnaby, B.C., and Calgary’s Farah Shirdon, who this week threatened attacks on the United States, before Twitter suspended his account.

Mr. Alexander said while they were few in number, he was troubled that Canadians had joined ISIS, which has been committing widespread atrocities in an attempt to impose its militant version of Islamic law on Syrians and Iraqis.

“We are not by any means the leading contributor of foreign fighters to Syria, even though the dozens that are there and the 130 that are abroad [with other extremist groups] is a disturbing number for all Canadians. But we want to ensure that Canada’s good name is not besmirched by these people any more than it already has been and that Canadians are protected.”

Measures to staunch the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria are among the strategies Canada and its allies have adopted to degrade ISIS. On Friday, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told the United Nations Security Council, which met to discuss the situation in Iraq, that ISIS was a “terrorist army” that had blended “medieval ideology” with modern weapons. “We must also reject their nihilistic worldview wherever we find it,” he said.