A man the RCMP labelled a high-risk traveller has managed to leave the country again, without a valid passport and having recently served time behind bars for passport fraud.
Mounties confirmed 27-year-old Mohamed El Shaer departed Canada in February, weeks after being released from jail in January, and reportedly travelled to Syria.
“On February 26, 2015, an arrest warrant was issued for El Shaer on three counts: forgery, uttering forged documents, and possession of identity documents,” an RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Harold Pfleiderer said in an email to Global News.
The RCMP also said El Shaer, as a condition of his probation order, was not to “re-apply for a passport or any other travel permits or documents without prior permission of the Minster of Immigration and Refugee.”
He was also required to remain in Windsor, Ont., where he and his parents live, his lawyer Patrick Ducharme told Global News.
Palestinian-Canadian El Shaer was charged with passport fraud in June 2014 after travelling to Turkey seven months earlier.
While in Turkey, he gave false information “for the purpose of procuring a passport for himself,” the National Post reported in November 2014.
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Despite that charge he managed to leave the country before a scheduled court appearances in October and early November. He returned to Canada Nov. 5 and was re-arrested at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
El Shaer pleaded guilty on Dec. 19, as a part of a plea deal, and was sentenced to 90 days in prison. But he only spent another 24 days behind bars because the plea deal saw him get “an enhanced credit” of one-and-a-half days for each day he had already served, Ducharme said.
Ducharme hasn’t been in touch with El Shaer in more than a month. “There was certainly no discussion about him leaving or getting travel documents,” he said.
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According to the National Post, El Shaer’s arrival in Syria was confirmed in a March 2 tweet from another man the RCMP label a high-risk traveller — Ahmad Waseem, an ISIS supporter who is also from Windsor and has previously travelled back and forth between Canada and Syria.
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Citing a tweet from a now suspended Twitter account, the Post said Waseem posted an earlier photo of himself with El Shaer and the message: “Canadian Muslims guess which ‘High Risk Traveller’ made it to Sham? ..So what’s your excuse?” (Sham refers to Syria.)
Word of El Shaer slipping past authorities came as the Conservative government pushes for new anti-terror legislation. It’s already a crime to leave the country to take part in terror-related activities, but neither El Shaer or Waseem have been charged under the Combating Terrorism Act.
The bill aims to make it easier to confiscate travel documents from people believed dangerous, and put them on no-fly lists. But both those should have applied to El Shaer already, yet he got out of the country anyway.
“Once you get a fake passport or a forged document, it’s probably fairly easy to leave again, unless you’re under 24-hour surveillance, because it’s not like people at the airport are going to know what you look like,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, a postdoctoral fellow based at the University of Waterloo who is researching Canadian foreign fighters and tracks their social media interactions.
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“I don’t think we’re watching a whole lot of people 24 hours a day,” he added.
Authorities had also been Waseem under surveillance before leaving Canada again after returning from Syria in 2013, where he was reportedly injured. He had his passport taken away after returning to Windsor. But he didn’t stay long.
“I think he became a little bit overwhelmed by the attention and didn’t feel like he was welcome here or didn’t feel like he could reintegrate very well,” Amarasingam said, having corresponded with Waseem online since he left Canada.
While El Shaer appears to be out of reach of Canadian law, he’s still in touch with Canada. The National Post quoted an email he sent reporter Stewart Bell.
“What do you want me to say… I guess we know who got the last laugh. Allah’s plan has beaten your fragile entire nation’s plan. May Allah guide you to the truth or destroy you.”
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