Canada is aware of reports suggesting that a man is in Turkish custody on charges of spying for the Canadian intelligence agency, but it cannot comment on matters of national security, a senior Canadian official said on Thursday.
Canada's Minister of Public Safety Steven Blaney made the remarks after reports emerged in media outlets that suggested that a suspect detained in Turkey on charges of helping three British school girls cross into Syria to join the ISIS group (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) worked for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
According to Reuters, which quoted an unnamed European security source, the suspect under Turkish custody had connections with the Canadian spy agency.
The Anadolu Agency approached Canada's Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Johanna Quinney for comment, who said that the question came under the domain of the Public Safety Ministry, which in turn reiterated the remarks of Blaney.
Earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu had said that Turkish police had detained a suspect on the payroll of a foreign spy agency who allegedly helped three teenaged British schoolgirls cross into Syria to join ISIS.
"Do you know who appeared to be the person that helped these girls? He has been detained," Çavuşoğlu said earlier in a live interview with the private A Haber TV channel.
Çavuşoğlu said that the man in custody worked for the intelligence agency of a country involved in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS. However, he chose not to disclose the exact country involved and only elaborated to say that the country involved was neither the U.S. nor any member of the EU bloc.
British girls Shamima Begum, 15, Amira Abase, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, went missing from East London in early February and reportedly arrived in Turkey to cross into Syria.
