Alberta man was ISIS propagandist, police say
Writing under the alias “Sulaiman Dawood al-Kanadie,” he penned fiery propaganda for the Islamic State about attacks that would dwarf Sept. 11, 2001.
In the ISIS magazine Voice of Khurasan, he praised the terror group’s late leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, demonized Jews and lectured about fighting jihad.
But the internet wasn’t as anonymous as he thought, according to recently-unsealed court documents that detail the RCMP’s investigation on the case.
RCMP counter-terrorism officers tracked al-Kanadie’s email account to a housing co-op in Laval, Que., and a rural property east of Edmonton.
Surveillance officers sent out to put eyes on the suspected ISIS propagandist found a bald 50-year-old smoking outside his building and picking up Subway footlongs in Sherwood Park, Alta.
His real name is Robert Floyd Rendall, according to an RCMP arrest warrant released by the Quebec court at the request of Global News.
A former butcher who went to high school in Toronto, he most recently worked for an Edmonton-based trucking company but is listed in police records as unemployed.
Police took him into custody in September 2023, and a judge has now restricted his internet use and ordered him to participate in an Edmonton de-radicalization program.
“Rendall advocates and glorifies violence and terrorism,” the RCMP alleged in the warrant that chronicles his alleged stint as an Islamic State (IS) propagandist.
“Through his writings in Voice of Khurasan and his sharing of propaganda, he attempts to influence other individuals to commit criminal offences for the benefit of IS.”
Reached by Global News at a phone number with an Alberta area code, Rendall declined to comment.
“Due to the nature of the allegations, which are serious without a doubt, I would need to refer you to my attorney,” he wrote in a text message. “I do apologize in advance I can’t be more help and make an official statement.”
His lawyer did not respond to questions. Nor would the Organization for the Prevention of Violence, where Rendall was required to undergo counseling, comment.
Rendall is the latest Canadian allegedly unmasked for producing the online content that terrorist organizations use to attract recruits and incite attacks.
Former Toronto resident Mohammed Khalifa executed prisoners in ISIS videos and has been described as one of the group’s most prolific propagandists.
Before coming to Canada and acquiring citizenship, Ahmed Eldidi allegedly appeared in an ISIS video that showed him dismembering a prisoner in Iraq.
Patrick Gordon Macdonald, a resident of Ottawa, made videos for the neo-Nazi terror outfit Atomwaffen Division.
Their alleged actions are particularly concerning because the extremist narratives they are accused of promoting have the potential to radicalize countless others.
The mother of a Canadian woman who joined ISIS told Global News she was angry at those who had lured her daughter to Syria.
Without action against those preaching extremism, “there’s going to be more death, there’s going to be more radicalization,” she said.
“And there’s going to be more suffering of mothers, brothers and sisters like me and my family,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition she was not named.
Terror groups value Canadians as spokespeople because they can produce content for English, and sometimes French, audiences, according to expert Jessica Davis.
“The other thing, too, is we do have a very free and open society, so people do sometimes take advantage of that here in Canada,” the former intelligence analyst said.
But as terrorist groups have harnessed social media platforms to appeal to increasingly younger followers, police have responded.
The RCMP arrested Macdonald two years ago in what marked Canada’s first prosecution for producing far-right hate propaganda. On Monday, he was sentenced to 10 years.
The FBI brought Khalifa to the U.S. from Syria and he is now serving a life sentence. Already facing charges over an alleged attack plot in Toronto, Eldidi was charged in December over his alleged ISIS video.
An expert said his arrest, first reported by Quebec’s francophone press in July, was significant because al-Kanadie was “deeply involved” in the propaganda of the ISIS Khurasan branch in South Asia
“He was an extremely influential, active figure. He would essentially contribute to their flagship English language magazine, Voice of Khurasan,” said Lucas Webber, an analyst at Tech Against Terrorism.
“And he was quite bellicose and hostile towards the West for instance. He was also quite prolific online in international global Islamic State spaces.”
Following the collapse of ISIS in Syria in 2019, the terror group’s hub shifted to Afghanistan, where it reemerged online under the name ISIS-Khurasan Province, or ISIS-KP.
To reach a global audience, in 2022 it began publishing Voice of Khurasan, an online English-language magazine that aspired to drive recruitment and attacks.
In July 2023, a new author began appearing in the magazine under the name al-Kanadie, Arabic for The Canadian.
“We need Allah-fearing leaders willing to stand up against the kuffar (non-believers) and say ‘We are not going to tolerate your oppression anymore,’” he wrote.
“‘And we are going to make you feel 9/11 was nothing more than a detonation prior to the actual explosion which is to come.’”
He claimed that “huge amounts of evidence” supported fighting for jihad, and only someone “completely out of his mind” would say otherwise.
From his perch in Canada, he castigated those who were only “raising empty slogans in the form of social media posts, sitting on their comfortable couches.”
Al-Kanadie returned in the following two editions of Voice of Khurasan, this time spreading antisemitism with an article titled “The Zionist Plague” that urged the killing of Jews.
He called ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi a “righteous man,” while terrorist fighters were the “real defenders of the honor “ of Muslims.
The posts caught the attention of the RCMP, which examined metadata to identify the email address used to upload the articles to the Voice of Khurasan site, according to court documents.
A request to the Google legal department yielded the IP address associated with that email address, which was located in Sherwood Park, Alta., the documents allege.
Police said they also found a second email address that used the name Sulaiman Dawood Rendall and was associated with a cell number with a Montreal area code.
That number was registered to Robert Floyd Rendall, police alleged. Database checks turned up his birthdate, driver’s licence and marriage to a Montreal woman, the court materials said.
The FBI, meanwhile, confirmed in a letter to the RCMP that “Sulaiman Dawood” was Rendall, and shared a list of his email and social media accounts.
The RCMP said it soon connected Rendall to an array of email and social media accounts, as well as videos and a podcast available on Amazon.
The podcast’s mission was to “expose oppression” and Islamophobia but advocated for the expulsion of Jews from countries, the RCMP wrote.
The podcast called Jews “filthy liars” and said that when “Zionists and these filthy people” spoke, “you should put a fist in their mouth,” police alleged.
Again speaking of Jews, according to the RCMP, the podcast host said that when “you put one of us in the hospital, we’ll put five of you in the morgue.”
The host did not identify himself but said he lived in Montreal, the RCMP said. He told listeners to stay away from non-Muslims and to avoid behaving like them.
“If you’re taking trans parades and gay parades and all these stupid parades, you’re actually losing your deen (beliefs), you’re losing your identity.”
Believing Rendall was escalating his rhetoric, the RCMP took its concerns to a judge in Quebec, alleging he had “made his skills available” to ISIS.
“Rendall facilitated, through his writings and sharing of recruitment material, the swelling of the ranks of ISIS-KP, according to the allegations filed in court.
He was “calling for the promotion of acts of violence,” and had written about “the need to commit a terrorist attack more powerful than that of Sept. 11, 2001,” the RCMP wrote.
Despite his alleged work for ISIS-KP, Rendall was not charged with terrorism offences. Instead, on Jan. 7, 2025, the court ordered a terrorism peace bond that imposes restrictions on him in the name of public safety.
Among other things, it requires Rendall to “actively participate in a treatment program against radicalization” offered by Edmonton-based Organization for the Prevention of Violence.
He also had to give up his passport and any weapons, and report weekly to police. He was banned from using his social media accounts.
Creating online content for terrorist groups is a way for those attracted to extremist ideologies to get involved without committing violence, said Davis.
“It’s kind of like financing from that perspective, and tends to be one of the first steps that people take in terms of mobilization to violence.”
If the allegations are true, by arresting Rendall, police shut down a propagandist working for a key ISIS publication, said Davis, who heads Ottawa consulting firm Insight Threat Intelligence.
“He’s going to be replaced by someone else. It’s not like the propaganda outlet is going to collapse. This is really sort of the counter-terrorism game of whack-a-mole,” she said.
“But we have an international responsibility to do this kind of thing, to take people off the street. I think the more important impact though, is reputational for Canada.”
“We would really suffer internationally for not being able to take action on this kind of thing. So even just the peace bond is going to be really important for Canada’s reputation in the global fight against terrorism.”
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