Canada moves to criminalize general calls for terror attacks

Associated Press

TORONTO

Canada announced a new anti-terror law Friday that will make it a crime for people to call for a terrorist attack, even if they don’t make a specific threat.

The law also will allow anyone suspected of being involved in a terror plot to be detained without charge for up to seven days and empower Canada’s spy agency to thwart attacks directly in a significant expansion of their powers.

Work on the law began in October after a gunman killed a soldier at Canada’s national war memorial and then stormed Parliament. The attack in Ottawa came two days after a man, said to be inspired by the Islamic State group, ran over two soldiers in a parking lot in Quebec, killing one and injuring the other before being shot to death.

The new law still has to be passed in Parliament, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has a majority of the seats so passage is all but assured.

Under current law, it is a crime to make a specific threat. The new law will make it a crime for a person to call for terror attacks on Canada generally or to promote or advocate others to carry out terrorism elsewhere.

“We cannot tolerate this any more than we tolerate people that make jokes about bomb threats at airports,” Harper said. “Anyone engaging in that kind of activity is going to face the full force of the law in the future.”

The penalty will be a maximum of five years in prison. Authorities also will be able to remove terror-related material from any Canadian website.