Police in Canada have arrested 10 young Montreal residents suspected of wanting to leave the country to join jihadist groups overseas.
The arrests were made over the weekend at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement Tuesday.
Police have seized the passports of all 10 young people and investigators have spoken to their families and friends.
No one has yet been charged and the investigation is ongoing, the statement said.
The identities of the 10 young people arrested have not been disclosed.
Some of them have ties to six young Quebecers who are thought to have traveled to Turkey, en route to Syria, in January this year, CBC News reported. Two of those were teenage women from Laval, Quebec.
They were only the latest in a string of such defections by Westerners lured to the Middle East to fight for extremist Islamist groups such as ISIS.
Canada’s Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney condemned recent threats made by ISIS against Canada and other Western nations in a statement Friday.
“Once again, ISIS has shown its horrific and barbarous nature by calling for attacks on Canadian soil. ISIS and the international jihadist movement have declared war on Canada and our Allies — simply because of the way we live and the freedoms we enjoy,” he said.
“We will not be intimated by these jihadi terrorists and we will not sit on the sidelines.”
