Undercover Jihadi | CSIS
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Welcome to True Spies. Week by week, mission by mission, you'll hear the true stories behind the world's greatest espionage operations. You'll meet the people who navigate this secret world. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position?

This is True Spies. I just did what I thought was the right thing to do. There's a famous verse in the Quran, stand up for justice, even if it's against the rich, the poor, your parents, your relatives, even yourselves. This is True Spies. Episode 10, Undercover Jihadi.

When you are called to give testimony in court, give that testimony. And if you don't give it, then God is aware of what you do. How do you become a spy on the front line of a critical operation where hundreds of civilian lives are at stake? A glittering career in the U.S. Marine Corps? A first in modern languages from Oxford? How about a stint in the Taliban?

This is the story of how a Muslim born and raised in Canada was radicalized aged 18 and set on the path of extremism only to have a dramatic change of heart and play a pivotal role in preventing what could have been one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in Canada's history.

My name is Mubin Sheikh. I'm a former extremist turned undercover operative for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Mubin's journey from jihadi to undercover spy begins in his childhood. Born in the 70s, from an early age he had a split identity, living between two worlds: the socially and religiously conservative world of his immigrant parents and the permissive society of his neighbors and school friends.

The kind of teenager I was growing up here in Toronto, Canada was pretty typical, in fact. You know, the environment in which I grew up was a complete contrast. You know, going to public school by daytime and in the evening time going to Quran school. And the Quran school was a complete difference from the public school I went to during the day. I mean, you know, public school was boys and girls mixing, caring, nurturing environment.

As opposed to the evening time when we would go to the Quran school and it was boys on one side, girls on the other side. And if you made mistakes while you were reading, they would just slop you, hit you with sticks, put you in stress positions. And so it was very different, very different.

As the eldest son, Mubin was expected to continue his madrasa studies, live up to his father's reputation in the community, and eventually step into his father's shoes as a Muslim leader. Was this what he wanted? I was struggling to navigate this space between

you know, having one foot in this Western world that I'm living in and born and raised in, and then one foot in this cultural community, this religious community, which was trying to kind of be separationist from that, from that worldview or that reality. So

So it was difficult. It was difficult to have to navigate that space and have to ultimately decide, you know, which of the two I was going to choose. He tried to be a good son. He had learned to recite the Qur'an by heart. But the pull of the Western lifestyle of his friends was just too much. He wanted to fit in, to be an ordinary teenager. It's the 90s. Grunge, the rave scene and hip-hop were all cool. And Mubin so wanted to be cool.

And what do you do when your parents are away and you want to impress your friends? You throw a house party. For Mubin, this party was to have far-reaching consequences. So, you know, the house party was the result of, or culmination, I guess, of this identity that I thought I was supposed to have as, you know, having these non-Muslim friends.

It was a great evening. Throughout the house, people were doing, I guess, what kids do, right? At parties, have music in different rooms and people are drinking and they're smoking and having a real good time. Until suddenly, my uncle bursts through the front door. Mubin's uncle grabbed him and struck him across the face, yelling to his friends to get out.

His friends fled, some jumping from balconies, some running out grabbing bottles and joints as they ran. Party over. For Mubin, this was the very worst thing that could happen. You know, my uncle immediately got on the phone calling for reinforcements. You know, it was basically, "Look at what your son has done." "Look at what your nephew has done." I could feel my dreams just, I mean, out the window.

Mubin had shamed and dishonored his family, his faith, and community. He had defiled his home. This is where people pray, his uncle had told him. How could he redeem himself? Put yourself in Mubin's shoes. What would you do to ease the guilt you felt, to restore honor to your family, and become the son they wanted? And so this is what would prompt me to now decide...

I need to make a choice. I need to make right with my family. And the only way I'm going to do that is to get super religious. In my mind, that meant a number of things. That meant, number one, I had to cut off my friends. It was drastic, of course. It was an extreme choice in one sense because it's going from one end all the way to the other.

And the background in which I grew up allowed for this kind of religiosity to be manifested through a particular religious group. This group is called the Tabligh Jamaat.

They're not extremists, they are fundamentalists. And what they call for is an immersion program, if you will, of four months in total, two months in India, two months in Pakistan, where you would spend every day in a local mosque, just living in the mosque, staying in the mosque and basically traveling to other mosque locations.

and you would do this for a four month period. And so I decided that what I needed was to go on this four month trip. The mission of the Tablighi Jamaat was to increase the number of believers. Mubin was to visit mosques and go to Muslim homes door to door and reinforce the belief and practice of Muslims. Now 19 and trying to be the good Muslim his family wanted him to be, he was diligent. He was young and looking for a path to redemption.

He spent two months in India where he excelled. He was validated, felt successful. He was becoming the person he was supposed to be. His next deployment was in Quetta, Pakistan. Mubin arrived, tired and dirty from a long journey on a train where he'd slept sitting up on a wooden bench back against the wall. Seeing the Quetta Mosque, it was like a mirage. Cool tiles and a giant water reservoir where people made their ritual ablutions before prayers.

Mubin didn't know that this place, Quetta, was later the infamous headquarters of Al Qaeda. One day, on a trip to a nearby village, a fateful encounter took place. I remember looking out and seeing this walled compound out of which all this foliage had been growing. And I just thought it was odd because in the middle of this almost desert-like society, desert-like geography,

there's all this greenery growing out of this place. So I thought, you know, what is this place? So as I came closer, suddenly I could see just as I bend around the corner, there are several men squatting and crouched onto the ground in the shade of the foliage. And so I came closer to them and that's when I realized that, hold on a second, these guys are not other tabligis, these guys are armed.

and I could see on the ground in front of them that they were just loaded with weapons. AK-47s, rocket propelled grenades, and belts of ammunition. And I remember thinking to myself at that moment, wow, you know, these are like the heroes of the old that I've read about, you know, and this 19-year-old kid seeking this new identity

Seeking a new identity with a religious flavor to it. And now seeing these guys in front of me, this was, you know, everything was coming together now. These heroes with machine guns told Mubin he could change the world with violence. And Mubin was listening. And, you know, for a moment, you know, I kind of thought to myself, wow, you know, what it would be like to...

to live with these people and to be with these people and to be fighting the good fight that they were fighting. And that for me was the highlight and the pinnacle of my trip because now basically, you know, I had been introduced to their world and I liked what I saw. Jihad, the soldiers had shouted, raising their guns in the air. Jihad is how you change the world.

Mubin didn't know that he had just met members of the Taliban who were soon to fight in Afghanistan and install an Islamic State. After his four months in India and Pakistan, Mubin returned home to Canada. He thought a lot about the soldiers he had met and how he could be like them. He started to associate with other extremists, recruiting others to "the cause". He felt he had a duty to take up arms and join in jihad. He began to wear his religious robes full time.

Now he had a long beard and wore a turban. He left the Tablighi Jamaat because they were not political enough. He became a Salafist jihadi and immersed himself in their separationist politics. So coming back to Canada, joining up with these more hardcore Salafi types, suddenly my worldview is inundated with

knowledge and awareness of political disputes that were taking place around the world in the Muslim world and especially wars, wars in the Muslim world. In the mid 90s is when the war in Chechnya happened and this was really at our, you know, on the tops of our minds. I mean, we were always talking about these conflicts and this one in particular.

And one of the curious things about the Chechen war is that this is when the first real jihadi videos started to come out. They were in the form of CDs, of course. But this was a series of CDs depicting the war in Chechnya. The militants had collected all this video footage of Russian armored personnel carriers being attacked.

in ambush attacks, Russian soldiers being engaged in firefights and shot dead, and unfortunately even beheading videos. And so these were the kinds of videos that we were consuming day in and day out. And we thought to ourselves that this was our mission in life, to effectively aspire to become warriors like we saw in the videos.

to effectively, for our life, to imitate the art that we were seeing on video. But then in 2001, the 9/11 attacks happened in America. Initially, Mubin celebrated. And my immediate and initial reaction is "Allahu Akbar!" And of course, "Allahu Akbar!" can be read in two ways. One is "Yes!" or the second being "Oh my God!"

To be honest, I had both feelings and both sentiments in mind. I did feel a little bit of elation. I did feel that, okay, good, something bad has happened to the US. The US is bad, therefore any bad that happens to it is good. That was the logic that we had.

That whole day and the way that the day transpired really, really affected me. So for example, you know, as I went upstairs and back to my workplace, I could see the stress that people had on their face. You know, one of my colleagues, her and I would debate religion all the time during work. And now she was softly crying. She was definitely not wanting to talk to me.

And I'm realizing that look at the impact that this is having on people. You know, she was softly crying because she was trying to reach her father who lives and works in New York. And I'm still trying to navigate within myself, you know, trying to make sense of this, that what is this actually a good thing? The responses of his co-workers forced Mubin to reconsider his commitment to the so-called cause.

It's one thing to be fighting the disbelievers who have invaded your homeland. That I understand. But flying a plane into a building of non-combatants on top of that, how do you justify that? And so this is what would force me to have to confront the fact that I came to subscribe to an ideology that basically produced this.

And then I realized that there wasn't a justification for this. That at some point, I went wrong because I came to subscribe to this world view which produced this horrible act. And so this is when I resolved and told myself that what I needed to do now was study the religion properly. So in 2002, Mubin decides to leave Canada.

He sells all his belongings and now with a wife and two small children departs to Syria. To study, to learn more about his faith, to become an Islamic scholar. He signs up for lessons in Arabic at Damascus University. It's here that he meets a young Islamic teacher who challenges Mubin's extremist ideology.

And I arrive in Syria and one of the things I realize is it's not an overtly Muslim looking place. I mean, yes, I saw a lot of hijabs, but the way that I dressed, I really didn't see many people in Syria dressing. You know, this full beard, long robes and turban was something that really scholars would dress like.

And so here I am in this, you know, hardcore Muslim looking guy showing up in Syria. So I remember at first it actually started with introducing ourselves in the classroom. And, you know, in the Arab world, in the Muslim world, you use what's called your kunya. Your kunya is basically your nickname, if you will. But it's more than a nickname. So, for example, if...

If your son's name is Adam, you would basically be referred to as the father of Adam. And father of means Abu, A-B-U. And so Abu Adam would mean father of Adam. Now, I was Abu Mujahid, right? Father of Mujahid. Mujahid means one who does jihad.

So you can imagine in the class when he asks, the teacher asks, you know, okay, what's your name? I said, I am Abu Mujahid. Well, that got their attention. Heads snapped round. Who is this? What name did you say? Everything about Mubin screamed extremist. But it was a reaction of his teacher that would be the start of Mubin's new life. The scholar, the teacher there, he says, oh, he starts to question me actually just on the name.

And this is where, you know, the relationship with that scholar started. He started to first, you know, ask me, well, what does jihad mean? And so, you know, I told him, I said, well, jihad means fighting. And he says, no, qital means fighting. What does jihad mean? And so this is how he started his engagement with me, so to speak.

Mubin agreed.

A transformation began. And this is where I would actually go through a full de-radicalization process. He basically, we together, there was a group of us, where he would actually go through the Quran and, you know, directly go to these verses which extremists had been misusing

completely out of their context, completely devoid of their historical context, theological context, and effectively re-taught us the Qur'an. Those lessons worked. Mubin was no longer dedicated to militant jihad. The experience of Syria also changed Mubin. He witnessed police brutality. Sitting on a bus he had watched while a neighbor of his had been beaten and hauled away by the secret police,

He began to appreciate how free he was in Canada. He had seen enough. I was fed up. I wanted to go back home. You know, Syria was a real police state and I just didn't want to live there anymore. So I returned back to Canada. But as soon as he returned in 2004, he was confronted with another pivotal event: the arrest of a childhood friend on terrorism charges.

The first week that I come back, I look in the front page of the newspaper and Momin Khawaja has been arrested in connection with the 2004 London fertilizer bomb plot. Momin Khawaja sat beside me in the Quran school I went to as a kid and him and I were actually quite good friends. And I look in the article and I see a reference to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and I effectively, you know, open the phone book

search up the listing in the directory and phone them up. And I call them and I say, hey, this guy that's been arrested, Momin Khawaja, I know him. It's got to be a mistake. An intelligence officer called Michael Smith asked to meet Mubin to talk more about the statement he wanted to make about his friend. An hour later, Mubin is sitting in a Tim Hortons coffee shop near his home.

A blue government car pulls up and out steps Michael in a sharp pinstripe suit, crisp white shirt and short brown hair. They chat. Mubin talks of how he used to agree with the terrorist attacks on the West, but not anymore. Michael says, "Sounds like you want to be the good guy." Then, "Would you be interested in consulting with the Canadian government?" Hmm, consulting, whatever could that mean? What would you think of that offer? A terrifying leap into the unknown?

or a chance to reinvent yourself, to make amends for past mistakes, to become the good guy, what would you do? So after this initial meeting with the intelligence officer, I went back and did a little bit of research and realized very quickly that this was Canada's spy agency and my job was now to be a spy.

Mubin was asked to more meetings, this time with two agents, Michael and another, AJ Brown. No suits this time. White shirts with ties, khaki pants and loafers. But the agents were not satisfied. They still needed reassurance about Mubin's views. Had he really changed? They asked him to go to a hotel room. I remember just entering the room. The blinds were drawn.

Out came electrodes which were attached to Mubin's fingers. Wires were wrapped around his chest and waist. A blood pressure cuff was strapped around his upper arm. And I had not recognized this person. I had not met the polygraph operator before. So he basically explained to me that, listen, this is a polygraph, also known as a lie detector. Please don't lie to me. I will know right away.

And so we begin the polygraph and I'm just being asked general questions of my life. But then the questions got into what I had been doing in Syria. They asked me if the Syrian regime had tasked me to be a spy and come back into Canada and spy on their behalf. And basically trying to get, you know, other answers to other questions.

What are your beliefs about Canada? What are your beliefs? Basically trying to find out if I was still of a particular mindset. And so I guess, you know, he was satisfied and I did pass the polygraph. And after that is when the real work would begin. Mubin was in. He'd been recruited as a spy. His work began online.

So my early assignments for the intelligence service basically included online platform exploitation, meaning getting into password protected chat forums in which extremist minded individuals were recruiting people. They were discussing tactics, techniques and procedures. And my job was to effectively get into these forums and see who was doing what and who they were doing it to.

And this became my life for a couple of years. The assignments kept coming. Then in 2005, Mubin was handed a dossier at a safe house location. And I'm basically told, listen, these are the guys. We want you to find out what they're up to. Mubin studied the faces in the dossier. This was new. Before, he'd been given five targets max. Now he was being shown 16. Already he could feel this was bigger than anything he'd been given before.

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Project Osage. A large international group of young and older men and their wives were inciting and planning terrorist attacks in the West and Europe. And Mubin's job was to infiltrate the Canadian cell. He was about to meet the group that would later be known as the Toronto 18. I had already been invited actually to the banquet hall. There was a presentation on

Muslim inmates who were in prison. And the grievance of the presentation was basically, look at these guys. They haven't been charged with a crime. They're being held on basically intelligence, on an immigration warrant. And they can't even, you know, interact with their family members. And because it was a topic of Muslim prisoners, these guys who I was supposed to investigate showed up at this event.

I remember sitting at the table, you know, one guy just basically came right across. I mean, I was sitting, you know, directly across from the main entrance. And one guy comes in and he's got a scarf covering his face. And I don't know how, but he walks straight over to me and basically almost sits right next to me, comes right next to me. And he says, you know, salam alaikum. I said, walaikum salam.

and he reveals his mask or he takes the scarf off. And I realize, and I quickly, I get butterflies in my stomach because I realized this is target number two from the dossier. And then he says to me, "Oh, my name is Ilyas." And I remember from the dossier that that is not his name. He's giving me a fake name. Mubin's instincts were right. The target's real name was Zachariah Amara, one of the ringleaders of the Toronto 18 group.

He was the one who would build a detonator and buy three tons of ammonium nitrate to use as a bomb. And he wasn't the only person of interest to put in an appearance that day. And then he says, "Well, you know, I'm actually, I'm just here waiting for my friends to show up." And so I thought to myself, "Huh." You know, I wonder/hope it's the rest of the friends that I saw in the dossier. And sure enough, a few minutes later,

several individuals come in through the front door again matching the description of what i saw in the dossier their photos i mean this is definitely them and they come over to the table that i'm sitting at recognizing quote-unquote elias and that's when i take the initiative and basically feel that i can now get up with zacharia amara that's who i was actually meeting

and basically joined all of them together at another table. And this is how I initially broke into the group and started to kind of become friends with the group. Throughout this presentation that was being held at the banquet hall on the Muslim prisoners, there was little snide remarks that were to indicate a pro-jihadist nature.

Afterwards, outside the venue, things took a more sinister turn. They began to quote-unquote recruit me. You know, we started to talk about, obviously, what the, you know, started with the premise of, you know, what the U.S. have done in Iraq.

is a crime. And the next part of the premise was that we had to strike the US because they had gone to war with Islam. And Canada, because Canada was allied to the US, was also a legitimate target.

Even though Canada didn't actually participate in the Iraq war, the fact that we are military allies to the U.S., according to this group, certainly made us a target. And so the conversation turned now to this idea that they had, which was we need to form a group to strike back at the U.S. and at Canada.

and we can do that. This is when I was effectively invited to a training camp so that we could bring all these guys who were attending the camp, who had already been invited to the camp by the ringleaders, to bring them to a level of operational capability to conduct catastrophic terrorist attacks against Canadian targets. As soon as he could, Mubin reported back to his handlers.

He told them the group had revealed plans to blow up office buildings and kill innocent people, and he had been asked to train them to do it. Clearly this wasn't a case of disenfranchised people searching for identity through extremist videos and literature. This was an organized group who had weapons and detonators for bombs and a plan to use them. Mubin's handlers at the Canadian Security Services had gone as far as they could.

He was transferred to the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team at the RCMP, otherwise known as the Mounted Police. This meant a significant shift in Mubin's position. He was told that working for them would eventually lead to him being exposed as an undercover agent and testifying in court. If he agreed, his anonymity would disappear. What would his father think? The community? He could become a target.

Mubin was being asked to make a decision that could affect the rest of his life and also that of his family. What would you do? After going so far, do you walk away thinking of yourself, thinking of others? Or do you double down? All I knew and I had this idea that I have a choice. Either I follow through with the case and see it through to its logical conclusion,

where I walk away from the case because of the risk that I might become identified in court, that my identity would be exposed, that my activities would be exposed, and I just didn't know how the Muslim community would react to that knowledge.

So I was torn. I really had to think about what I was going to do and eventually I did decide that I'm going to follow through with the case. I can't just walk away now. I can't just turn my back. I had to stick with the case. I had to see it through to its end. If the group succeeded in carrying out their plans to maim and kill innocent people,

He could have been the one to stop that. So he signed up to go deep undercover and join the group as they put their plan into action. They headed out to make camp in the national forest. It was December, the snow was thick, the group had brought guns, and Mubin was put in charge of teaching the terrorists how to use them. There was physical training, obstacle courses, and they shot each other with paintball guns to imitate live fire. They were shown how to simulate martyrdom missions.

But it wasn't just physical, it was ideological too. The nightly entertainment was watching bombings, explosions and beheadings. Mubin was horrified at the glee and excitement the group showed as they watched US soldiers die bloody deaths.

So we come to the time of the actual training camp and, you know, we have an obstacle course built. We have our tents set up. The tent is camouflaged. We're watching, you know, every night we were watching videos of Anwar al-Awlaqi.

A famous American deceased, of course, ideologue who was really calling on attacks on the West. We were watching other videos, IED attacks in Iraq, US military soldiers being killed by an Iraqi sniper. These were the kinds of activities that we did for almost a good two weeks out in the bush in the middle of winter in Canada. These weren't just simulations.

The group were training to put their plans into action and they had specific targets in mind.

The targets that, of course, we had in mind included a number of things. On one level, it was aspirational. There were a few targets that were mentioned which were just out of the realm of achievable. For example, attacking the nuclear power plant by flying a plane into the building. But the other was quite practical, and that included three one-ton ammonium nitrate truck bombs

to go off at a coordinated time during rush hour with shrapnel inside these bombs detonated at 9 a.m. so that the maximum amount of damage could be inflicted on pedestrians, on vehicles, even down to the details of broken flying glass as a result of the bombs. This was the end goal. This was the end state.

And it also turned into an attempt to attack the Parliament building of Canada, to effectively run into the building and with guns drawn and effectively hijack the Parliament of Canada.

and according to one of the ringleaders, to behead members of parliament one by one to force the eviction of Canadian forces from Afghanistan as part of our military deployment. Mubin returns to his handlers as soon as possible and files his report. The police decide enough is enough. Now is the time to intervene. Mubin and his family are taken to a safe house. They wait for news.

400 police officers, tactical units, helicopters, snipers all swooped on the suspects. The Toronto 18. Mubin knew his cover must have been blown already. He hadn't been arrested along with the others. What would happen now? How would his community respond when he was exposed as a spy?

I remember sitting in the hotel room, watching the news, seeing all of this unfold. And then I realized to myself, "Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?" That was actually my first initial response. And I'm seeing on TV, a number of individuals have been arrested and for a split moment, they show three of the guys that I have just spent

you know, all this time with day in and day out. And sure enough, you know, it's the same group. It's this group that I've been undercover with. And now they're all over the media. And now I'm asking myself, now what? What's going to happen? While he's in the safe house, Mubin is offered witness protection. The offer? He would take his whole family, including his father, and start a new life.

A tempting proposition, surely. This to me was unacceptable. I mean, you know, they started with, you know, our threat and risk assessment indicates a significant threat to your life. And I knew that people in the community would be upset, but threat to my life? I, you know, I found that a little bit hard to believe. And so I respectfully declined witness protection. And I thought to myself that, you know what, I will, I guess I'll just, I'll take it as it comes.

The spying was over. The suspects had been arrested. Mubin had refused witness protection and, at this point, might have been able to keep a low profile. He hadn't yet been exposed. But Mubin decided to blow his own cover. He complained to his handlers that no credit had been given to the Muslim community for helping. The government was still controlling the narrative. There had already been reactions. Mosques had been attacked by Canadians who were angry that Muslims had plotted against them.

Mubin decided he had to give an interview to a Muslim journalist to explain his role in the case. He was about to be on TV. But first, there was someone he had to speak to. And so before that interview would air on TV, on that news channel, I had to tell my father. And my father watched the show religiously. And I told my father, I said, listen, the show you're about to watch, I've given an interview. And you know that

terrorism case that you heard about? Well, I am the undercover in that case and I have been an undercover agent all along. And actually his response to me was, you know, he said, Alhamdulillah, you know, all praise is due to God. You know, tell them to give you a job. But then, of course, things got very serious because he realized that what the heck has just happened? My son is on TV basically telling the whole world that he was an undercover in this terrorist cell.

And suddenly he became very nervous, very upset and very anxious. He wasn't the only one. And this basically described the fallout in the community because when eventually the community learned very quickly that I was the undercover, then suddenly I became the bad guy. Suddenly all the attention turned to me

And the accusations of course became, "Oh, Mubin is the one that radicalized them. Mubin is the one that set them up and then called the cops on them." But I would be dogged for a couple of years at least of these accusations of I had betrayed the community. So Mubin's role in recent events was out in the open and the backlash from his community was swift.

Not everyone believed his intentions were good. Some even believed it was Mubin who had radicalized the group. He was now a pariah. Had it all been worth the price he now had to pay? I received death threats, of course.

And worst of all was, you know, people that I thought I knew as my friends no longer wanted to have any kind of contact with me. And I could understand that. I could understand that maybe, you know, they didn't know if I was really their friend or if they were a target of an investigation. And this is something that took a little while for me to kind of get over. I was effectively excommunicated and blacklisted from the community.

This wasn't the reaction Mubin had expected. He was shunned at the mosque and his handlers were furious. In Mubin's mind, he'd gone undercover on behalf of all Muslims and wanted to show that not all Muslim communities produced terrorists. But no one seemed to get it. Mubin was in a very dark place. I became very depressed.

I was being accused of all these things. And the thing is, is that while I was undercover and doing these taskings, I remember, you know, telling myself that I needed to go out of my way to make sure that I did everything by the book, that I gave these guys all the chances that I could reasonably give them.

And even though I had done all those things, I still received those criticisms and complaints. So there was nothing I could do at that point. The prosecutions would take the form of five legal hearings that would spread out over four years. It began to sink in that Mubin would spend a long time as a witness. The community had blacklisted him and he had been labeled as the bad guy. He fell into drug addiction, became distant from his wife and his children. And that's not all.

I effectively lost my faith for a few months. I didn't know what to believe anymore. I started doing drugs, I started drinking, things that I would never have done. I mean, things that were anathema to my life. And it was an escape for me. I just didn't know who I was supposed to be anymore. His drug abuse eventually took him to see a doctor. He was told that if he carried on, he would soon be dead.

He needed to make peace with himself and with his God. So it was very difficult for me. It was crushing to me in one sense that this community that I had been a part of for so long, that my father is such an important part of, this community is now excommunicating me.

So what do I do? Is it possible that everybody else is wrong and I am right? And that didn't make sense to me at that time. But in fact, it was true.

You know, it was true that in fact they were all wrong because they were not there. I was there. I had seen these things. I had heard these things. We had recorded these interactions with these individuals. You know, they were recorded through other means outside of even just my collection methods. It was Mubin's faith that eventually led to his recovery. So unfortunately, you know, I had to go through this, you know, cleansing, if you will,

But I say, alhamdulillah, you know, that the faith is still inside me. And eventually what would end up happening is I would go to Mecca and Medina in early 2007 and basically spent about 10 days there, you know, crying my eyes out to God, you know, asking for forgiveness. If I had done something wrong, forgive me, you know, teach me what is the correct way

And after spending all this time and just, you know, gushing out everything from inside, cleansing myself, you know, detoxing myself in Mecca and Medina, the places that I was

taught that this is where you get your absolution. This is where you go to get that forgiveness. And so I like to think that I got it because when I came back, I was in a much, much better place and I was rewarded for it in the sense that every time a court hearing took place, I succeeded. I did very well. And this I took as a validation that in fact God had answered my prayers.

Mubin was the primary witness in the Toronto 18 hearings and was responsible for the conviction of 11 would-be jihadi terrorists. Three are serving life sentences. As the sentences were handed out, the public was reminded of the huge damage that would have been done had the group's plans gone ahead. Catastrophic, said one judge, saying the plan would have changed the lives of many, if not all Canadians, forever. But where did that leave Mubin? You know, I...

100%, I know I did the right thing. I have no doubts of that in my mind, especially now after all these years and everything that's come and gone in that time, including ISIS. I mean, the fact that I was doing this in 2004, the 9-11 attacks that just happened just three years prior, the Iraq invasion that just happened one year prior.

And looking back with what happened since then, we saw this group called ISIS basically come and go. And I became very involved in anti-ISIS operations just as an independent researcher and expert. And I only became that because of my work in the Toronto case, my time giving testimony,

a degree that I took in policing intelligence and counterterrorism to kind of make sense of what I got myself involved in. So when I look back, for sure, I did the right thing. For sure, I had taken the right step because by the time ISIS had come onto the scene, Western media were looking for people that they could have to speak about

on this topic, speak intelligently based on some kind of proper experience that they had. And so I was able to basically step up and defend the Muslim community. This was always my function as I saw it. It wasn't just about cheering on the causes for the community. That's one side of it. The other side was, of course, stepping into and stopping plots that were originating from inside that same community.

Am I a hero? You know, I like to think that, you know, I just did what I thought was the right thing to do. I mean, this was, this is what my religion commands me to do. You know, there's a famous verse in the Quran, stand up for justice, even if it's against the rich, the poor, your parents, your relatives, even yourselves. And when you are called to give testimony,

In court, give that testimony. And if you don't give it, then God is aware of what you do. So it's a famous quote, chapter 4, verse 135. But, you know, I had quoted the verse many times, but now I had actually lived the verse and it had become a part of my life. I'm Hayley Atwell. Join us next week for another brush with true spies.

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