Who is the alleged spy, now sitting in a Turkish cell, who is accused of helping three young British girls join the Islamic State?

Did he work for Canada?

Those questions bounced from Ankara to Ottawa to London Thursday after Turkey’s foreign minister announced the capture of a man who allegedly was “working for the intelligence service of a country participating in the coalition against ISIS.”

Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu added to the intrigue, saying the country in question was not the U.S., or anywhere in Europe.

Then, officially at least, people stopped talking. The commenting fell to unidentified sources.

Turkish media outlets were first to report that the suspect worked for a Canadian intelligence agency, although was not a Canadian citizen.

But a Canadian government source quickly disputed the reports, telling the Toronto Star, among other media outlets, that the suspect was not employed by a Canadian security agency or any federal government department.

Remember the word, “employed.”

Reuters was next, quoting an unidentified European security source who said the person in custody “had a connection” to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

CSIS, the RCMP and Canada’s embassy in Ankara, Turkey, referred all queries to the Public Safety Ministry.

But Minister Steven Blaney would not comment when confronted in the House of Commons.

His spokesperson, Jean-Christophe De Le Rue, wrote in an email, “We are aware of these reports. We do not comment on operational matters of national security.”

Spy stories are never easy to tell, but this one is complicated even more by the diplomatic fisticuffs between Turkey and it allies in the battle against the Islamic State.

Turkey has been under intense pressure to stop the flow of foreign fighters across its border into Syria.

Turkey’s ambassador to Canada, Selcuk Unal, said there are 9,915 people from 90 countries suspected of trying to join the Islamic State and who are named on Turkey’s no-entry list.

“Given the fact that there are an estimated 15,000 foreign fighters, the gap between those we know and we do not know is huge,” Unal wrote in an email to the Star earlier this month.

Turkey was at first a reluctant partner in the coalition against the Islamic State as Ankara had backed militant groups fighting the Syrian regime. But the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality was forced to change when the friend became the Islamic State.

But distrust between Turkey and members of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State — also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh — remains.

There have been a few high-profile cases of co-operation.

As the Star reported in October, Canadian intelligence officials tipped off their Turkish counterparts about three teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 18 who left Toronto and were heading to Syria via Istanbul. The parents of the girls called authorities after discovering their daughters had been lured online by the Islamic State.

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They were intercepted by Turkish officials and sent home.

But that wasn’t the case in stopping three British girls — Shamiana Begun, 15, Amira Abase, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16 — who made it to Syria via Turkey in February.

British authorities pointed the finger at Turkey. Turkey pointed back, saying they had no advance notice.

Now Canada enters into the melee with reports that those girls were helped by someone connected to CSIS.

On Parliament Hill Thursday, there was only political posturing and a government that refused to shed light on the issue.

Liberal MP Lawrence MacAuley, a former solicitor general, said if the claim is true it is indeed “very troublesome.”

Stating the obvious, he added: “If someone who was employed by CSIS helped somebody in an illegal act in some other country, it’s wrong.”

NDP MP Paul Dewar said it was example of why Canada needs parliamentary oversight of our security agencies — a key talking point during an election year, especially given new anti-terror legislation currently before parliament.

By Thursday evening, one Turkish newspaper identified the suspect as Syrian Mohammed al Rashid, who they said had confessed to allegedly meeting the British girls in Istanbul and accompanied them to the Turkish town of Gaziantep, near Syria’s border. The newspaper said he confessed to sharing intelligence he received in Syria with Canadian officials.

Is it possible for someone to work for CSIS or provide intelligence, without being technically employed?

The government source, who had earlier said the suspect was not an employee of CSIS, nor any other Canadian government agency, offered no comment.

In fact, the source didn’t reply at all.

With files from Bruce Campion-Smith. Michelle Shephard can be reached at mshephard@thestar.ca . Follow her on Twitter @shephardm.

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