Thread by @rcallimachi

1. Big news out of Canada: Abu Huzayfah has been arrested on a terrorist “hoax” charge. The narrative tension of our podcast “Caliphate” is the question of whether his account is true. In Chapter 6 we explain the conflicting strands of his story, and what we can and can’t confirm

https://twitter.com/amaramarasingam/status/1309601081387888644

2. Below is a link to Chapter 6, which exposes both what we know he lied about, explores the conundrum of what to do when you discover that a source has lied, and lays out for readers what we know to be fact and equally the many things we still don’t know
nytimes.com/2018/09/20/pod…

3. Among my enduring questions - the question that we ended the podcast with - is the puzzle of why the Canadian government never charged him? I could never get a straight answer from the RCMP or CSIS. The fact that he was radicalized and pro-ISIS is all over his social media.

4. So did they not charge him because they couldn’t prove he’d gone to Syria? Multiple US intel agencies told us that he had and we geolocated an image of him shooting a pistol over a river in Syria. But we also know he didn’t travel on his own passport.

5. When I was in Syria in 2018 and got the first interview with the English-speaking narrator of ISIS’ most famous videos - a Canadian - I was taken aback by the conduct of Canadian intelligence: nytimes.com/2019/02/17/wor…

6. They contacted the expert we had used to verify the voice of the Canadian narrator and asked him if he would send them the audio of my interview with the Canadian detainee in Syria. The expert refused and NYT refused as well (we are not an arm of the government).

7. But it was in the course of that exchange that I learned that Canadian intelligence had not - and possibly could not - send Canadian personnel to Syria to interview the detainee and collect information on ISIS. If the RCMP is so hamstrung that they can’t go to Syria ...

8. ... how do they hope to build a case against a member of ISIS? But that brings me back to Huzayfah. Why haven’t they charged him? His social media alone in an American setting would likely be enough for a material support of terrorism charge. I was told Canada is different.

9. So did they not charge him because they *couldn’t* gather the information about him (physically, since they apparently can’t go to Syria) or because their laws don’t allow it? Or because they thought he was making it up?

10. As @AmarAmarasingam points out, the hoax charge forces a checkmate: Huzayfah can prove he wasn’t lying by ... giving them whatever evidence they need to prove that he’s a former terrorist - evidence they lacked to charge him with terrorism the first time around.