Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders says there’s “no evidence to support claims” by Daesh that it was responsible for the mass shooting on the Danforth that claimed two lives and wounded more than a dozen people.

Faisal Hussain, a 29-year-old man from Toronto, opened fire on a busy stretch of Danforth Ave. on Sunday night, killing a 10-year-old girl, an 18-year-old woman and wounded 13 people. Hussain, 29, died near the scene after exchanging gunfire with Toronto police.

In a statement Wednesday, Saunders said all areas of Toronto’s police service have been involved in the investigation, and the force has received assistance from law enforcement partners “at every level.”

“At this stage, we have no evidence to support these claims,” Saunders said regarding any connection to the terrorist group, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL.

“Accurate information about this investigation will only be released by the Toronto Police Service. We will continue to explore every investigative avenue including interviewing those who knew Mr. Hussain, reviewing his online activity, and looking into his experiences with mental health,” the statement said.

Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told reporters Tuesday that Hussain wasn’t in the sights of national security agencies, saying there is “no national security connection between this individual and any other national security issue.”

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According to the news agency Agence France-Presse, Daesh said the shooting was committed by “one of the soldiers” of the group. It followed “calls to target nationals of the coalition countries,” according to the group’s propaganda agency, Amaq.

Hussain’s family said in a statement that he had suffered from “severe mental health challenges, struggling with psychosis and depression his entire life.”

Speaking to reporters after an unrelated news conference at city hall Wednesday, Mayor John Tory cautioned against drawing any conclusions from reports the Danforth shooter was linked to Daesh, saying Toronto police are “the only accurate source of information” on the investigation.

He said Toronto officers are “the people that are in possession of the information that would lead to any conclusions or not about anybody involved in this.”

Amarnath Amarasingam, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and a prominent Canadian researcher of Islamic extremism and terrorism, said if there was a clear link to Daesh, the RCMP would have taken over the probe from the Toronto police.

Although he said it was possible that a Daesh connection could arise, he’s seen no obvious activity by Hussain on Daesh networks.

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“He doesn’t seem to have been embedded in these networks in any meaningful way,” Amarasingam said.

In general, Daesh claims of responsibility for attacks have become far less reliable over the last year, he said. There used to be a process where trusted Daesh-linked individuals around the world verified claims, for example, through videos where a perpetrator pledged allegiance to Daesh. That meant that when Daesh claimed responsibility, it “actually meant something and we could trust it.”

But that system began breaking down around mid-2017, he said, in part because some of the verifiers have been arrested. There have since been “bizarre” responsibility claims by the group — including the 2017 Las Vegas shooting — “met with a collective eye roll because this is a white senior citizen accountant, and there was no indication that he had even converted to Islam, never mind that he was some mastermind jihadist,” Amarasingam said.

Amarasingam thinks Daesh is relying more on Western media hinting at connections in news reports, which it then uses as evidence to backup claims to responsibility.

With files from Ben Spurr and Star wire services

Wendy Gillis is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and policing. Reach her by email at wgillis@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @wendygillis

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