The prized RCMP agent who infiltrated an ISIL network in Ottawa says he got into the spy business by accident.



It was January 2011, and Abdullah Milton was in Ottawa for the first time.



“I was a tourist,” the Muslim convert revealed in a March 2014 interview with RCMP investigators.



His version of events has gone untold until now.



Milton took pictures of Parliament Hill and the Saudi embassy, then posted them on Facebook. He claimed in the interview that CSIS paid him a visit after his posts were a deemed a “red flag.”

Milton, originally from New Brunswick, said he told CSIS agents he was just posting tourist pictures of Parliament Hill and that he had Saudi friends and had posted the embassy photos for them to see.



The way Milton told it, that visit from CSIS agents launched his career as an asset for the spy agency.



Milton’s version of how he became a CSIS asset is revealed in the 2014 RCMP interview. His name had come up during an RCMP terrorism investigation targeting Ottawa’s Aswo Peshdary, and when the Mounties moved to expand their probe to include his friend, a top CSIS official let them in on a secret: The man the RCMP wanted to target was actually a CSIS asset.



CSIS then cut its ties with Milton and handed him over to the RCMP in March 2014.



In one of his first interviews with the national police force, Milton said he supplied CSIS with intelligence because he was “just trying to help … and, you know, try to stop possible attacks, and that kind of thing.”



When the Mounties learned that their fresh target was actually a CSIS asset, they put him to work as a paid agent straight away. The Citizen has confirmed the RCMP have so far paid Milton at least $800,000 for befriending and spying on suspected members of an ISIL network in Ottawa. The Mounties paid him in cash and it is not known whether Milton declared the income and paid taxes on it.



The paid agent’s work is credited for convictions against terror twins Ashton and Carlos Larmond, and Suliman Mohamed. Their rapid descent into Islamic extremism ended in August when they admitted plotting to leave the country to join ISIL. Ashton Larmond pleaded guilty to instructing a person to carry out a terrorist activity, while his brother, Carlos, pleaded guilty to attempting to leave Canada to commit terrorist acts. Mohamed admitted to conspiring with the Larmonds and others to carry out a terrorist activity. The sentencing judge said he was grateful that the RCMP were always one step ahead of the “would-be evildoers.”



Carlos and Ashton Larmond were both convicted of terrorism offences.

The continuing criminal case against accused terrorist recruiter and financier Awso Peshdary, one of the trio’s alleged co-conspirators, meanwhile, is also anchored in the agent’s spy work.





Suliman Mohamed was also convicted of terrorism offences.

In fact, Abdullah Milton has been spying on Peshdary for years.

He first started keeping an eye on Peshdary back in 2011, when they worked the graveyard shift together at Walmart.



“Anything he would say to me that, you know, of concern or whatever, I would obviously report that (to CSIS) … but I was still building my relationship with him,” Milton told the RCMP.



Partial transcripts of Milton’s interviews with the RCMP are found in a court application filed by Peshdary’s lawyer, Solomon Friedman, who is requesting records from CSIS so he can properly defend his client. The lawyer wants access to materials related to the CSIS investigation of Peshdary and the spy agency’s dealings with Milton. The application notes that Milton is a key prosecution witness whose credibility and reliability will be issues at Peshdary’s trial.



Peshdary, 26, was charged in February 2015 with recruiting, financing and facilitating terrorism.



The RCMP believe Peshdary’s star recruit was John Maguire, who quietly left Canada in December 2012 to join ISIL in Syria, where he was featured in a propaganda video declaring religious war on his home country. The Islamic State reported Maguire died fighting in 2015, though his death has never been confirmed.



New details about the case against Peshdary are included in the court filings — including Milton’s analysis that while Peshdary, his longtime target, “used to be more radical,” he “was now a changed man and less radical.”





Awso Peshdary, 25, is charged in an alleged terrorism conspiracy in support of the Islamic State.

The RCMP’s case that finally yielded charges against Peshdary was initially built on a foundation so shaky that investigators were twice turned down when they went to get search warrants against Maguire.



Ontario Court Justice Peter Wright refused to sign off on the RCMP warrants in 2013, saying the Mounties had fallen “very far short of the requisite standards expected at law.”



The judge also said the RCMP had “failed to establish that its sources of this investigation are reliable or trustworthy as is required.”



It wasn’t until CSIS shared its intelligence that the Mounties were able to finally secure a search warrants for electronic and computer data.



According to a CSIS briefing to the RCMP, Peshdary accompanied Maguire in the car ride to a Montreal airport, where Maguire boarded a plane for overseas. Peshdary kept in contact with Maguire while he was in Syria, with CSIS intercepting four conversations in the summer of 2013, according to court filings.



John Maguire.

In one intercepted conversation on Aug. 7, 2013, Maguire is heard asking Peshdary for advice about an undefined situation.



Milton’s role as a CSIS asset remains unclear. In one of his interviews with the RCMP, he said his work with CSIS had been a “learning experience” and that he had made mistakes along the way. He also noted that he has a weird memory and had to train himself to keep repeating key details in his mind to remember them.



None of the terrorism charges has been proven against Peshdary, who remains in jail awaiting trial, which is scheduled for 2018.