By Andrew Soong
MONTREAL (Reuters) - A Muslim teacher once jailed by Canada as a security threat denied on Friday he had radicalized Canadian teens believed to have headed to Syria to fight with Islamic State, saying his school had only brief contact with one of the six students.
The students, four men and two women aged 18 and 19, left Montreal in January and February on their way to Turkey and then to Syria, according to media reports, the latest in a string of young Westerners who have become radicalized and have headed to the Middle East hoping to fight with Islamic State.
The teacher, Adil Charkaoui, told a news conference in Montreal that anti-Muslim sentiment in Quebec is to blame for alienating Muslim students, not his classes, where he said only Arabic, the Koran and "basic notions" are taught.
He said only one of the students who are believed to have left to fight for Islamic State took a course at his school, which rented classroom space from two colleges in the Montreal area. Both colleges have canceled rental contracts with Charkaoui, accusing him of radicalizing students.
"Having checked the facts, I can tell you that individual was registered with the school but only attended two classes, not two months as reported ... after that he left the class," Charkaoui told a news conference in Montreal.
"I'm stunned by the twisted logic of the spokespersons of the two (colleges) and the pseudo-experts that are blaming radicalization of young people for what has happened," he added, noting that his school does not support Islamic State.
Charkaoui, an outspoken advocate against Islamophobia whom Canada had tried to deport, was arrested in 2003. He was imprisoned or kept under surveillance for six years under a security certificate, based on classified information from Canada's spy agency.
Ottawa had claimed that Charkaoui had trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. The government had sought court approval to deport Charkaoui, a Montreal resident who emigrated from Morocco but was not a Canadian citizen, but withdrew its request rather than endanger the spy agency's sources.
Media reports had said that several of the teens who have left Montreal had attended Charkaoui's school as recently as the fall 2014 term.
One of the students, Shayma Senouci, made a string of Facebook posts last year in support of Gaza, calling the Israeli action there a "genocide," and re-posted links to the Koran.
She also posted a video of a Muslim woman being harassed on a Montreal bus with a one-word comment: "disgusting", and in 2013 called on friends to sign a petition against Quebec's "Charter of Values", proposed legislation that had sought to prohibit public-sector employees from wearing or displaying conspicuous religious symbols including Muslim headscarves.
The legislation died when the nationalist Parti Quebecois, which spearheaded the Charter, lost power in last year's provincial election, but tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Quebec remain.