Edmonton-area teen, 15, allegedly connected to violent online network intent on causing ‘as much suffering as possible’

Police say a 15-year-old from the Edmonton area was arrested on a terrorism-related offence earlier this month.

The teenager was arrested May 12 by Canada’s national security police, the RCMP Federal Policing Northwest Region’s National Security Enforcement Team (INSET).

Authorities say they feared the youth would commit terrorism-related offences related to the COM/764 violent online network.

RCMP say the online group is known to have extreme ideological views and are targeting vulnerable children, luring them to commit sexual acts, self harm and torture animals. The group is also being investigated by the FBI.

“Elements of the Com/764 network are known to have extreme ideological views and are victimizing children through desensitizing and radicalizing them to violence,” INSET said in a news release.

The teen, who cannot be named under Canadian law, remains in remand and will face a bail hearing Tuesday.

“In the face of networks like 764 – which includes youth perpetrators targeting other vulnerable young people online – education is our first line of defence, empowering young people to recognize manipulation, resist extremism, and reclaim the internet as a space for growth, not grooming,” INSET said.

Investigators say they have commenced proceedings against the youth by way of a terrorism peace bond. That allows investigators to monitor people who appear likely to commit a crime when there’s no evidence of an actual offence.

‘They want to see society burn’

Michael King, the deputy executive director of the Alberta-based Organization for the Prevention of Violence, says the Com/764 network is “very secretive” and “quite widespread,” operating in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

He describes the group’s ideology as very distinct from other terroristic ideologies.

“if you’re thinking about white supremacy, white nationalism, al Qaeda, the Islamic State, all of those ideologies that fall under terrorism, all seem to try and rectify some form of injustice,” King explained. “Now, you might agree with that injustice or not, you might believe that that injustice is based on a conspiracy theory, up to you.

“But 764 is an ideology that wants to create chaos, as much suffering as possible, and they’re not trying to rectify any problem or injustice in society. The underlying ideology is that they want to see society burn. So they fall under this kind of newer category of extremist ideologies that we call nihilism.”

Targeting minors

King says the network’s distinctive feature is that it targets children and victimizes them, and in turn pressures them to do harm to others — such as their closest loved ones or even their pets.

“They’re trying to get minors to do some of the most egregious acts possible to kind of accelerate the demise of society,” he said. “Their thinking is, ‘let’s just create as much suffering and immorality possible so that society collapses.’ So they’re targeting youth, mostly online, sometimes through video games online, and they’re trying to get them so that these youth will hurt themselves, so they might engage in self harm. They’re trying to get youth to engage in sexually exploitive pictures, videos.

“And the other distinct aspect of them is that they are asking their victims to victimize other kids. So it does create this kind of cycle of victimization amongst youth.”

He says the group adopts various strategies to coerce children into the network, including love bombing online. It could happen on games like Roblox or Minecraft, King explains.

“They’ll pretend to be very friendly with the child, they might even send some in-game currency to the kid, and then the kid feels like they owe something to this new person that they’ve just met online, and they might start being friendly with the child, getting the child to reveal some personal information about themselves. And as they do that, and they have all this information about the kid. They can threaten the child and get the child to basically obey their orders.

“At some point, when this kid is is really recruited into the network, and they have enough coercive material about the youth, they’re going to ask the youth to do the same thing to someone else.”

King recommends parents limit how much their child can speak to strangers online, and be aware of who they are speaking to.

“Make sure that your child feels safe enough to come to you as a parent if they’ve done an error online,” he said. “So it’s not all about getting angry if they’ve done something online. The parent should really prioritize problem-solving if the child, for example, has revealed personal information online, or sent pictures online, anything that compromises them. They should feel safe enough to go to their parent and try and solve the problem.”

–With files from Carly Robinson