What does the intelligence report actually say?
A classified assessment produced by Canada’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) in June warns that a group of Canadians currently detained overseas for alleged ISIS membership will “highly likely” pose a violent extremist threat upon returning to Canada. The report, obtained by Global News, was drafted after Iraq announced it had taken custody of an unspecified number of ISIS-affiliated individuals from Canada. Its language is direct: a potential return of these “Canadian extremist travellers” from Iraqi custody would, in the assessment’s words, “highly likely pose a violent extremist threat to Canada” — either through direct violence or by radicalizing others once back on Canadian soil.
Why is this warning surfacing now?
The report gained renewed urgency following a deadly attack at Berlin’s Pride festival on a Saturday in late June, when a 21-year-old German citizen named Abdul Ballout drove a vehicle into a crowd and attacked people with a knife, killing a Polish woman and injuring 29 others. German authorities shot and killed Ballout the following day. Prior to the attack, Ballout had travelled to Turkey and Lebanon in an attempt to join ISIS, was detained in Lebanon, and was returned to Germany in November. A German court had ordered him to attend a de-radicalization program — a measure that, in hindsight, proved insufficient. The parallel to Canada’s situation is not incidental; the ITAC report was written just a month before the Berlin attack and raises precisely the same question German authorities failed to answer correctly.
Who are the Canadians being held abroad?
The individuals in question are part of a broader wave of Canadians who left the country — from cities including Edmonton, Windsor, Montreal, and Mississauga — to join ISIS after it seized large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate. As ISIS collapsed militarily around 2018 and 2019, U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters captured a number of these individuals. Some of the Canadian women who had joined ISIS were repatriated between 2021 and 2023; the federal government brought back nine women from British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec, along with their children. A third of those women have since been charged with terrorism offences, while most others were placed on terrorism peace bonds — court orders restricting their movement and online access.
The men remain abroad
The Canadian government has not repatriated any of the Canadian men captured in Syria. Among the most prominent is Muhammad Ali of Mississauga, a self-admitted ISIS sniper. Others include residents of Edmonton, Windsor, and Montreal, as well as a man who obtained Canadian citizenship through his father but has never lived in Canada. A sixth Canadian, Mohammed Khalifa, was transferred to U.S. custody in 2021, flown to Washington, D.C., and subsequently sentenced to life in prison. Meanwhile, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council stated in February 2026 that it was holding nearly 6,000 ISIS members from 61 countries — Canada among them — and planned to investigate and prosecute all of them within six months.
What threat do returning extremists actually pose?
Security analysts and former intelligence officials are consistent on this point: individuals who travelled abroad to join ISIS represent a qualitatively different kind of threat than those who were radicalized at home. Phil Gurski, a former analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), points to “the experience they have, the people they met and the anger they are returning to the country with” as factors that elevate the risk. Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, argues that even those who tried to join ISIS and failed — like Ballout — carry a lasting danger, because “their past commitment to ISIS’s cause means they carry the same latent threat: individuals who sought out the battlefield and, regardless of outcome, retain both the ideological drive and the networks to act on it later.”
The Canadians detained in Iraq went further than Ballout
Security consultant Sheryl Saperia, CEO of Pearl Strategic Counsel and a former head of an advocacy group for terrorism victims, draws a pointed distinction between the Berlin attacker and the Canadians currently in Iraqi custody. “The Canadians detained in Iraq got much further than he did,” she said. “They arrived, they lived under ISIS rule, and at least one fought for the group and publicly called for attacks here.” Saperia argues that before any repatriation occurs, Ottawa must be able to identify what admissible evidence exists to support terrorism charges in a Canadian court — and have a clear plan for cases where that evidence falls short of the legal threshold.
What is the broader threat environment in Canada?
ISIS has not disappeared. Despite being largely expelled from its Syrian territorial stronghold by 2019, the organization has persisted in what CSIS describes as an “increasingly permissive” environment. The conflict that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel has further intensified what CSIS terms religiously motivated violent extremism. In its 2025 annual report, CSIS disclosed that it had launched seven “priority investigations involving mobilization to violence” connected to that conflict. Global News also reported that Canada disrupted four “violent extremist plots against Jewish targets” since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict — all of them linked to ISIS. The intelligence service describes ISIS as “the most significant threat to Western interests,” with an enduring goal of seizing territory to re-establish a caliphate.
What does Canada plan to do?
The ITAC report states that “Canadian authorities are actively monitoring the situation” as Iraqi courts prepare to process thousands of ISIS-affiliated detainees, including Canadians. CSIS has also warned that the evolving situation in the Middle East could “expedite timelines” associated with the return of ISIS members to Canada — meaning the question of repatriation may move from theoretical to urgent faster than expected. The intelligence service acknowledged that some returnees “would likely pose national security and public safety risks” unless Canada implements “sufficient mitigation measures,” without specifying what those measures would look like in practice. Two Canadians who had joined ISIS were convicted of terrorism offences in 2024, including the first woman successfully prosecuted after returning from Syria — but others remain in the Middle East and are actively seeking to come back, including a Montreal man imprisoned in Turkey. The legal, security, and constitutional questions surrounding repatriation remain unresolved, and the Berlin attack has made clear that the cost of getting those answers wrong can be measured in lives.
