An intelligence document obtained by Global News warns that a group of Canadians detained abroad for allegedly being part of ISIS will “most likely” pose a threat when they return to their homeland.
The Integrated Threat Assessment Center report was written in June, after Iraq said it had arrested an unspecified number of ISIS members from Canada.
The intelligence report said the suspects are vulnerable to contributing to extremism once they return to Canada, “either directly through acts of violence or indirectly through the radicalization of others.”
“The potential return of Canadian extremist travelers currently detained in Iraq would likely pose a violent extremist threat to Canada,” she added.
The danger posed by returning ISIS supporters was underlined on Saturday when a 21-year-old attacked a Pride festival in Berlin with a car and a knife.
A Polish woman died and 29 others were injured. Police killed the suspect, Abdel Ballout, a German citizen, on Sunday.
Authorities said that before the attack, Ballout had traveled to Türkiye and Lebanon in an attempt to join ISIS.
He was arrested in Lebanon and returned to Germany in November. A German court ordered him to attend an anti-extremism programme.
A month before the incident, Ottawa’s threat assessment agency warned of the risks posed by Canadians in much the same situation.
Like Ballout, they are alleged extremists who left their homes to join ISIS and were detained in the Middle East.
Terrorism analyst Lukas Weber said the Berlin incident showed that even those who tried to join ISIS and failed could be dangerous.
“These individuals pose a long-term risk to national security even without their immediate involvement in violence,” said Weber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism.
“Their prior commitment to the ISIS cause means they carry the same latent threat as Ballut: individuals who have sought the battlefield and, regardless of the outcome, retain both the ideological motivation and networks to act on it later.”
After ISIS seized large swaths of Syria and declared it an Islamic caliphate, dozens of men and women left Canadian cities to join the terrorist group.
While some served for ISIS in Syria and Iraq, others like Aaron Driver and Rihab Dughmosh were stopped along the way and instead launched attacks in Canada.
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As ISIS began to collapse in 2018, US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters captured Canadians who were part of the group.
Between 2021 and 2023, the federal government repatriated nine women who left British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec to join ISIS, as well as their children.
A third of the women were charged, but most of the others were placed on terrorist peace restrictions that restrict their movement and access to the Internet.
The government has not yet returned any Canadian ISIS men captured in Syria, including ISIS sniper Mohammed Ali from Mississauga, Ontario.
The others were Edmonton residents, Windsor and MontrealIn addition to a Briton who had never lived in Canada but obtained citizenship through his father.
The United States removed a sixth Canadian, Mohammed Khalifa, from Syria in 2021, flown to Washington, D.C., and imprisoned for life.
Cheryl Saperia, a consultant who advises on security matters, said German authorities appear to have misassessed the threat posed by the oak.
“The question that Germany answered wrong, and which Canada now faces, is: What is the evidence from which we can conclude that a person who has decided to join ISIS no longer intends to act on it?”
“Canadians detained in Iraq got much more than they did,” said Saperia, CEO of strategic consultant Pearl and former president of an advocacy group for victims of terrorism.
“They arrived and lived under ISIS rule, and at least one of them fought in the organization’s ranks and openly called for attacks here,” she said.
“Before anyone is returned to their home country, Ottawa must be able to determine what evidence is admissible to support terrorism charges in a Canadian court, and what the plan is if that evidence is insufficient.”
Two Canadians who joined ISIS were convicted of terrorist crimes last year, including the first woman to be successfully prosecuted after returning from Syria.
But some are still in the Middle East and trying to return to Canada, including a Montreal man who was imprisoned in Türkiye.
In Iraq, Supreme Judicial Council It said in February that it was detaining nearly 6,000 ISIS members from 61 countries, including Canada.
The statement did not mention their names, but said that they were transferred to Iraq from Syrian prisons and would face investigations and trials.
The Canadian intelligence report said: “Iraqi authorities announced plans as of February 2026 to investigate and prosecute all guilty individuals within a period of six months.”
“Canadian authorities are actively monitoring the situation.”
Phil Gorski, a former analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said extremists returning from abroad pose a greater threat.
This is because of “the experience they have, the people they meet, and the anger they bring back to the country,” he said in an interview.
Although completely eliminated in Syria in 2019, ISIS has survived amid what the Center for Strategic and International Studies calls an “increasingly permissive” environment.
The conflict in the Middle East, which began with a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has fueled what the Center for Strategic and International Studies calls religiously motivated violent extremism.
In its 2025 annual report, CSIS said it had launched seven “priority investigations related to mobilization for violence” motivated by the conflict.
Global News reported last week that Canada had foiled four “violent extremist plots against Jewish targets” since the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. They are all linked to ISIS.
He added that ISIS “remains the greatest threat to Western interests, and its permanent goal is to seize lands to establish the caliphate.”
CSIS wrote that the evolving situation in the Middle East could “accelerate the timelines associated” with the return of ISIS members to Canada.
The CSIS report agreed that some of them “likely pose risks to national security and public safety” unless Canada takes “adequate mitigation measures.”
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
