Last June, a man in Winnipeg was arrested on suspicion that he would commit a terrorist offence. Kevin Mohamed, who has been linked by numerous sources to a Twitter account peppered with references to Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the war in Syria, appears to have tweeted his displeasure.

“How can you do this to people based on (a) hunch they ‘might’ engage in terrorism(?),” he asked. Nine months later, Mohamed was arrested for the same reason.

The “fear of terrorism” provision in the Criminal Code is being used more and more to arrest people like Mohamed, suspects police believe could engage in terrorism, according to legal experts and researchers who follow national security and radicalization in Canada. The former Conservative government passed Bill C-51 days after Mohamed’s tweet last year. Among a host of other changes, the anti-terrorism legislation tweaked the provision to allow police to arrest and seek peace bonds for people who “may” commit a terrorist offence. The law previously said police needed to suspect they “shall” engage in such activity.

It was this provision that the RCMP cited when announcing Mohamed’s arrest last week. The 23-year-old former University of Waterloo student was held in police custody over the Easter weekend and charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possessing a dangerous weapon, allegations that his lawyer Anser Farooq said pertain to a knife.

He has not been charged with any terrorism-related offences, though Farooq said police suspect him of participation, encouragement and seeking to travel to engage in terrorist activity. In the statement announcing his arrest, the RCMP referred to efforts to prevent people from travelling abroad to “gain training and expertise that could be used in the planning and implementation of future attacks on Canadian soil.”

On Monday, the National Post reported Mohamed allegedly travelled to Syria in the spring of 2014 — around the same time Daesh, also known as the Islamic State, declared a caliphate there. A friend of Mohamed’s from Waterloo, who asked not to be named for fear of being investigated himself, told the Star that Mohamed travelled to Turkey at that time for a few weeks with his mother and brother. Mohamed visited to border-town of Antakya to help refugees from Syria, the friend said.

The Star could not independently verify these accounts of Mohamed’s travels. His mother and brother declined to comment and hung up when contacted by phone on Sunday and Monday.

Craig Forcese, a national security law expert at the University of Ottawa, said the trend of police using the “fear of terrorism” provision as a pre-emptive way to stop terrorist suspects picked up in the wake of attacks on Parliament Hill and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. in October 2014. Forcese explained that the rule allows police to attach conditions on suspects through peace bonds without having to prove criminal activity. If the conditions are broken, the suspect can be jailed, he said.

“It becomes a sort of customized Criminal Code for the individual . . . Electronic bracelets, curfews, those things are all potentially in play.”

Scott Tod, deputy chief with the North Bay Police and former co-chair of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s counterterrorism committee, testified at a parliamentary hearing on Bill C-51 last year. He told the Star that the expanded “fear of terrorism” provision was necessary to address the threat of homegrown terrorist attacks.

There is a “slippery slope” risk, though, Forcese said: police might rely on the tool too much and it becomes an inappropriate means of arresting people for crimes they haven’t committed and may never commit.

Both Tod and Forcese said the key is to make sure there are robust checks on police power. As it stands, use of the provision needs approval from the attorney general, and any peace-bond conditions need judicial sign-off and can be challenged in court, Forcese and Tod said.

Mohamed is scheduled to appear in court at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Other ‘fear of terrorism’ cases

Aaron Driver

The 23-year-old was arrested in a raid on a suburban Winnipeg home in June 2015. Using the Twitter alias Harun Abdurahman, Driver called the Parliament Hill attack “justified” as retaliation for violence against Daesh, also known as the Islamic State. Last month he agreed to a peace bond under the “fear of terrorism” provision of the Criminal Code, with conditions that included needing written permission to use a cellphone and to stay off social media until the end of August, the CBC reported.

Ismael Habib

Montreal’s Ismael Habib was picked up in February after his then-girlfriend told police he showed her beheading videos and was being urged by his ex-wife to join jihadist fighting in the Middle East, the Montreal Gazette reported. A Crown prosecutor later asked, under the “fear of terrorism” provision, for a peace bond that could hamper Habib with conditions for release should harassment, death threat and forged-identification charges fail to pass muster, the paper reported.

Seyed Amir Hossein Raisolsadat

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The Prince Edward Islander was arrested under the provision last spring. Police alleged he acquired castor beans that could be used to make the ricin toxin and that he searched online for how to make explosives, the CBC reported. Raisolsadat, a chemistry student, was released on a peace bond that barred him from possessing guns or leaving the island.

Merouane Ghalmi

The Montrealer signed a peace bond in March 2015, after he was arrested for “fear of terrorism.” He wasn’t allowed to communicate with certain people and was made to wear an electronic tracking bracelet, the CBC reported.

Daniel Minto Darko

The 26-year-old friend of Ghalmi was arrested by the RCMP and agreed to a “fear of terrorism” peace bond last year. Darko was forbidding from communicating with anyone in Syria, Turkey and Malaysia, or any person connected to a terrorist group on social media, the CBC reported. He also couldn’t use a cellphone for a year.

Read more about: