Tracking radicalized Calgarians overseas is mission of mother who lost son

The mother of a Calgary man who died in Syria fighting with ISIS is working to uncover names of other radicalized young peoplewith links to thecity.

ChristianneBoudreau spends a lot of time online, researchingand reaching out to people, tryingto connect the dots between all the young men associated withher son Damian Clairmont.

She said therecent discovery of yet another Calgary connection to the group Islamic State in Iraq and Syriais certainly not the last.

"We don't know all of them so we don't know for sure, we're still trying to dig up names, but it's getting so challenging because they're dying so fast," she said.

Calgarian killed in Bangladesh

The names of a handful of young men have surfaced in connection to Clairmont's prayer group in Calgary, includingTamim Chowdhury, who was recently killed by police in Bangladeshafterallegedly orchestrating a deadly attack in a restaurant in that country's capital, Dhaka.

Amarnath Amarasingam,a fellow atGeorge Washington University's Program on Extremism,communicates with radicalized Canadians as part of his research and keeps in touch with Boudreau.

He said the numbers from Calgary go beyond Clairmont's close-knitgroup, whichmet in a prayer room on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Eighth Street S.W.

"There's a bunch of other people who left but I don't know if they're part of any cluster yet," he said.

"There's an Indian guy who's left from there, there area few Somalis who left from there, there'sFarahShirdon, also leftI'm not sure who he was connected with, but hewasn't plugged into the Eighth and Eighthcrowd."

Many have gone silent

Amarasingam said it's tough to track them overseas once they take on a jihadi name, and lately many have gone silent online.

Calgary police wouldn't comment specifically on these cases but said given the city's populationit's not surprising to see so many fighters from their city.