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20-year-old Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud, a native of Hamilton who had been recruited by extremist group Islamic State (IS), was reportedly killed in fighting in Syria last week, his family said.
Earlier in the week, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had unofficially told his family that he was killed in the anti-IS military campaign, battling Kurdish troops in northern Syria.
The family’s lawyer, Hussein Hamdani, said that his extended family had gone into isolation to deal with the loss. Hamdani also said that the family was trying to figure out what led to Mohamud’s crossing over, described by family and friends as outgoing and athletic.
“That is an important question that we must look at and try to find the answer to”, Hamdani said.
A former student of York University, Mohamud is one of 130 Canadians, according to the Department of Public Safety, to have gone to the Middle East and fight for IS. Mohamud is believed to be the first Canadian foreign fighter to have been killed in the region since the launch of US air strikes.
However, most friends and family say that in hindsight, they had noticed some changes in Mohamud.
Janaan Issaka, who was a friend of Mohamud at York, said that he was one of her “closest friends at school last year”.
“I met him around this time, end of September; we auditioned for the hip-hop dance team and that’s where I met him. It’s so crazy, knowing the kind of person he was and thinking that somebody could be so brainwashed”, she said, describing him as very outgoing before he had retreated in spring.
She added that around the end of the school year, he said, “I don’t party anymore, I don’t do anything like that, I’m just focusing on my religion”.
Hamdani, speaking to CBC Hamilton, said that the family had also started to notice the changes,
“He was seeking his new community online”, Hamdani said.
He also said that by the time the family reached out to him, he was already in Turkey.
“They reached out to him and asked what was going on, and that’s when he said ‘my intention is to cross over and go to the Syrian battlefront’”, Hamdani added.
Hamdani then immediately got in touch with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and CSIS, but they were too late to stop Mohamud.
“The hope and the desire was we’d be able to catch him before he crossed the border from Turkey into Syria. They learned now that once he’s off the plane in that end, he’s with his handlers and there’s an underground railroad. We were just a day or two late. Had we known about this, had the RCMP or CSIS known about this just two days earlier, they could’ve contacted their connections from the Turkish authorities and stopped Mohamed from getting off the plane”, Hamdani said.