Alleged Toronto ISIS attack plotter now faces war crimes charges

A Toronto man accused of plotting an ISIS-inspired mass murder in the city with his son is now facing war crimes charges, CBC News has learned.

Ahmed Eldidi, 62, and Mostafa Eldidi, 27, both appeared in a Newmarket, Ont. courtroom late Monday afternoon from the prisoner box. Ahmed Eldidi leaned in to hear an Arabic-language interpreter as federal prosecutor Marie Comiskey read the new charges.

A Superior Court indictment viewed by CBC shows the elder Eldidi is now charged with the following war crimes "against a protected person in a non-international armed conflict":

• Murder.
• Mutilation.
• Torture.
• Outrages upon personal dignity.

All offences allegedly occurred overseas between November 2014 and June 2015, before Ahmed Eldidi came to Canada and was granted citizenship.

Ahmed Eldidi's defence lawyer Kabir Sharma told CBC an ISIS propaganda video "forms the basis" for the war crimes charges. The video, posted online in June 2015, shows a man dressed in black using a sword to dismember a motionless victim in an orange jumpsuit.

The elder Eldidi was previously charged with aggravated assault, listed as having occurred outside of Canada in June 2015, but prosecutors said the new charges would replace that one count.

"The underlying conduct is the same, but there are now four war crimes alleged," Comiskey said.

Eldidi granted Canadian citizenship in May

Ahmed Eldidi came to Canada in 2018, federal records show, and was granted Canadian citizenship in May of this year. His son, who does not hold Canadian citizenship, arrived in 2020 and was granted refugee status two years later.

Investigators said earlier this year that Ahmed Eldidi and his son were "in the advanced stages of planning a serious, violent attack." Both accused have remained in custody since their arrest in July, pending bail hearings.

The Egyptian-born Eldidis, who were living in the east Toronto district of Scarborough, are both charged with conspiracy to commit murder and other offences related to support for the listed terrorist group, ISIS.

Court documents suggest Ahmed Eldidi was in possession of an axe, while his son had a machete when the pair were arrested by the RCMP's national security unit in a Richmond Hill, Ont., hotel.

Authorities have declined to say which specific group the accused allegedly had in their sights for the alleged attack in Toronto, but Jewish advocacy organization B'nai Brith Canada told a parliamentary committee in October the Eldidis had planned "an attack against Jewish Canadians."

B'nai Brith told CBC the source of their information was Brantford, Ont.-area Conservative MP Larry Brock.

"We were within a hair's breadth — minutes, hours or potentially days away — of a mass casualty event on the Toronto Jewish community," Brock said in August at a meeting of the House of Commons public safety and national security committee. He did not respond to requests for further comment.

Renée Proctor, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Marc Miller, said in an email "officials continue to examine a timeline as well as evaluating the circumstances that allowed these individuals to enter Canada," adding that the federal government "does not take the revocation of citizenship lightly."

"This is a complex and multi-layered investigation that we are only beginning to understand," Ahmed Eldidi's lawyer, Kabir Sharma, recently told CBC.

"[Ahmed] Eldidi maintains his innocence and is eager to challenge the allegations in court."

Nate Jackson, a lawyer for Ahmed Eldidi's son and co-accused, previously said in an email, "I look forward to vigorously defending Mostafa Eldidi's innocence."