Canadians returning from ISIS 'may be at greater risk,' intelligence report says
A group of Canadians detained overseas on suspicion of being part of ISIS “may” pose a threat when they return home, warns an intelligence document obtained by Global News.
The report by the Integrated Threat Assessment Center was written in June, after Iraq said it had captured an undisclosed number of ISIS members from Canada.
The suspects are responsible for contributing to extremism once they return to Canada, “either through acts of violence or indirectly by harming others,” the intelligence report said.
“The possible return of Canadian extremism travelers currently detained in Iraq could pose a violent threat to Canada,” it said.
The danger posed by returning ISIS followers was underlined on Saturday when a 21-year-old attacked Berlin's Pride festival with a car and a knife.
A Polish woman died and 29 others were injured. The police killed the suspect, Abdul Ballout, a German citizen, on Sunday.
Before the attack, Ballout had visited Turkey and Lebanon in an attempt to join ISIS, authorities said.
He was arrested in Lebanon and returned to Germany in November. A German court ordered him to attend a de-radicalization program.
A month before the incident, an Ottawa-based threat intelligence agency warned of the dangers posed to Canadians in a similar situation.
Like Ballout, they are said to be hardliners who left home to join ISIS and were imprisoned in the Middle East.
Terrorism analyst Lucas Webber said the incident in Berlin shows that even those who try to join ISIS and fail can be dangerous.
“These people pose a long-term national security risk even without engaging in violence,” said Webber, a threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism.
“Their past commitment to the ISIS effort means they carry a subtle threat similar to Ballout: people who want a battlefield and, regardless of the outcome, retain both the motivation and the networks to act later.”
After ISIS took control of much of Syria and declared it an Islamic Caliphate, scores of men and women left Canadian cities to join the terrorist group.
While some were working for ISIS in Syria and Iraq, others like Aaron Driver and Rehab Dughmosh were stopped along the way and instead attacked in Canada.
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When ISIS began to fall in 2018, the US-backed Syrian Kurdish militia kidnapped Canadians who were part of the group.
Between 2021 and 2023, the federal government repatriated nine women who had left BC, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec to join ISIS, along with their children.
A third of the women were charged, but most of the rest were placed on anti-terror peace bonds that restricted their movement and access to the Internet.
The government has yet to repatriate any Canadian ISIS fighters captured in Syria, including self-confessed ISIS gunman Muhammad Ali of Mississauga, Ont.
Others were residents of Edmonton, Windsor and Montreal, as well as a Briton who had never lived in Canada but obtained citizenship through his father.
The sixth Canadian, Mohammed Khalifa, was extradited from Syria by the United States in 2021, taken to Washington, DC, and imprisoned for life.
Sheryl Saperia, a security consultant, said the German authorities appear to have misjudged the threat posed by Ballout.
“The question that Germany got wrong, and that Canada now faces, is: what evidence do we have to conclude that someone who is willing to join ISIS no longer intends to do so?”
“The Canadians who were imprisoned in Iraq are much more extreme than he is,” said Saperia, CEO of Pearl Strategic Counsel and former head of the advocacy group for victims of terrorism.
“They came, they lived under the rule of ISIS, and at least one of them fought for the group and publicly called for an attack here,” he said.
“Before anyone is sent home, Ottawa should be able to say what substantial evidence there is to support terrorism charges in a Canadian court, and what the plan is if that evidence is insufficient.”
Two Canadians who had joined ISIS were convicted of terrorism charges last year, including the first woman to be successfully prosecuted after returning from Syria.
But others remained in the Middle East and tried to return to Canada, including a Montreal man who had been detained in Turkey.
In Iraq, the Supreme Judicial Council said in February it had arrested nearly 6,000 ISIS members from 61 countries, including Canada.
The statement released their names, but said they had been transferred to Iraq from Syrian prisons and would face investigation and trial.
“Iraqi authorities have announced plans from February 2026 to investigate and prosecute all those responsible within a six-month period,” said a Canadian intelligence report.
“Canadian authorities are closely monitoring the situation.”
Phil Gurski, a former analyst for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said extremists returning from abroad are a serious threat.
That is because of “the experience they have, the people they have met and the anger they bring back to the country,” he said in the interview.
Despite being virtually eradicated from Syria by 2019, ISIS has survived in what CSIS calls an “enabling” environment.
The Middle East conflict that began on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel have fueled what CSIS calls religiously motivated violent extremism.
In its 2025 annual report, CSIS said it launched “seven significant investigations involving incitement to violence” fueled by the conflict.
Global News reported last week that Canada has thwarted “a violent conspiracy against Jews” since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict. They were all related to ISIS.
ISIS “remains the most significant threat to Western interests, with its ever-present goal of seizing territory to establish a caliphate,” he said.
The changing situation in the Middle East “could accelerate timelines related” to the return of ISIS members to Canada, CSIS wrote.
The CSIS report acknowledged that some of them “may threaten national security and public safety” unless Canada takes “adequate mitigation measures.”
