Alberta man accused of being ISIS propagandist placed on terrorism peace bond

Police have accused a 50-year-old Alberta man of secretly producing online propaganda for the Islamic State. He has since been placed under a terrorism peace bond.

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Police have accused a 50-year-old Alberta man of secretly producing online propaganda for the Islamic State. He has since been placed under a terrorism peace bond, one of several ISIS-related cases across Canada in recent weeks.

The details were first reported by Global News, which obtained and reviewed recently unsealed RCMP court documents.

Court records unsealed by Global News allege Robert Floyd Rendall, writing as “Sulaiman Dawood al-Kanadie” for Voice of Khurasan — an online magazine published by the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan — praised former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, called for the killing of Jews, and warned of attacks that would make 9/11 “look like a detonation before the real explosion.”

RCMP traced the writer’s email traffic from a housing co-op in Laval, Quebec, to a rural property east of Edmonton. Surveillance officers observed a bald man matching the suspect smoking outside his building and picking up sandwiches in Sherwood Park before arresting Rendall in September 2023.

Police also allege Rendall hosted a Montreal podcast railing against Jews, urging listeners to “put a fist in their mouth” and threatening, “when you put one of us in the hospital, we’ll put five of you in the morgue.”

Despite alleged ISIS ties, prosecutors did not lay terrorism charges. Instead, on Jan. 7 this year, a Quebec judge imposed a terrorism peace bond requiring Rendall to surrender his passport and weapons, report weekly to police, stay off social media, and complete a de-radicalization program run by Edmonton’s Organization for the Prevention of Violence.

Rendall’s case comes amid a surge of ISIS-related activity across the country over the past month. In Montreal, a 17-year-old was charged in August with three terrorism offences for allegedly planning an ISIS-inspired attack.

Around the same time, Conservative public safety critic Frank Caputo raised concerns after spotting convicted ISIS kidnapper Hussein Borhot apparently living in a minimum-security prison despite a 12-year sentence.

Also in August, B.C. prosecutors released bus-camera video of a 2023 attack in Surrey in which a man slashed a passenger’s throat before calling 911 to pledge allegiance to ISIS.

And federal documents revealed Ottawa spent at least $170,000 repatriating eight Canadian women who joined the terror group in Syria costs that included business-class flights and luxury hotel stays with some of those women now facing terrorism-related charges.

The current allegations against Rendall have not been proven in court.