A Pakistani man arrested in Quebec as he was allegedly on his way to New York to conduct a mass shooting at a Jewish centre entered Canada last year on a student visa, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, charged last week in an ISIS terrorism plot, received a student visa in May 2023 and arrived at Toronto’s Pearson airport on June 24, 2023, the minister told reporters.
“This is all that I’ll be commenting on this individual,” Miller told reporters. “It’s very important that we don’t comment and actually it’s dangerous to comment any further.
“Any defence lawyer is looking at elected officials in their comments about this case, salivating at any comment that is made that could be seen as compromising the judicial process.”
He said it was “highly careless” of the Conservatives “to be firing their mouths off again” about Khan, and that Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre’s advisors “should be counselling him to shut his mouth.”
Khan was arrested in Ormstown, Que., on Wednesday as he was allegedly about to be smuggled across the U.S. border to carry out a terrorist attack for ISIS on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel.
The U.S., which has been investigating Khan since last November, has asked for his extradition to New York to face terrorism charges. He was scheduled to appear in court in Montreal on Friday.
The 20-year-old Pakistani was taken into custody just over a month after the RCMP arrested a father and son, Ahmed and Mostafa Eldidi, for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack in Toronto for the so-called Islamic State.
The cases have raised questions about how alleged ISIS supporters intent on carrying out terrorist attacks were able to get through the government’s immigration security screening net.
The Conservatives have asked for the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to be recalled to look into about how security screening failed to detect Khan’s past.
Global News reported on Sunday that Canadian Jewish groups were told during a briefing with the RCMP and Public Safety Canada on Friday that Khan was on a student visa.
“Alarmingly, this latest incident once again raises questions about the rigorousness of our immigration process and vetting protocols,” said Michael Levitt, president of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.
Miller said the government took security breaches seriously.
“Let’s not be naive. A determined individual can gain access to this country, and that is for the security services inside our country to apprehend this person,” he said.
“If they commit a crime or if they’re about to commit a crime. And that’s exactly what happened. Our police forces did their jobs and arrested the individual. And we’ll let the court case take its course.”
Meanwhile, alleged ISIS financier Khalilullah Yousuf, who was arrested by the RCMP in July 2023, was scheduled to appear in a Toronto courtroom on Wednesday.