File Photo: Islamic State Militants. (Associated Press)
A young Canadian woman abruptly left her family to join the Islamic State group in Syria after purportedly being radicalized while studying religion online, public broadcaster CBC said Wednesday.
The 23-year-old's sister told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that the woman had taken an online course to study the Koran, but reportedly learned how to get to the IS-controlled city of Raqa in Syria to join the extremist group.
One day in mid-2014 she just left.
Canada's spy agency warned the family that their daughter had been "interacting with people they thought were dangerous and were influencing her in a negative way," according to the sister.
But the warning, she said, was "very vague" and not heeded in time.
It comes as the Canadian government is set to grant sweeping powers to its spy agency to thwart terror plots and disrupt suspected extremists' travel plans, such as preventing them from boarding a plane to join a banned group abroad.