Mohammed Ali Dirie was one of 17 people connected to arrests on June 2 and June 3, 2006, in the 2006 Toronto terrorism arrests. He was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. He was released in October 2011, left Canada in 2012, and reportedly died in 2013 fighting in the Syrian Civil War, although his death has not been conclusively verified. Life Dirie moved from Somalia to Canada at the age of 7 with his mother as a refugee. In 2003, he was the subject of a Toronto Star article about a carpentry business that hired local youths, and he spoke of wanting to go to college to become a radiologic technologist (radiographer). He began working with his friend Yasim Abdi Mohamed, as the pair would travel to New York and purchase discount designer jeans in seedy neighbourhoods, which they would re-sell to merchants in upscale Toronto neighbourhoods for profit, earning up to $1,000 per trip. During an August 2005 trip however, Dirie and Mohamed talked about whether they should purchase guns for themselves for protection in New York's bad districts. A friend with them insisted he was there for clothing, not weapons, so they dropped him off at a bus stop to travel back to Toronto while they carried on to Ohio in search of a gun. "It wasn't as easy as I thought to buy a gun" Mohamed later said, explaining that they spent two weeks in the United States before they acquired the firearms. However, when they returned to the border to cross back into Canada at the Peace Bridge, border guards found Mohamed carrying a gun in his waistband with ammunition in his sock, while Dirie had two guns taped to his thighs. Although it was believed to be a typical gun smuggling case, the border guards called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who grew concerned when they noticed the pair were driving a rental car that had been arranged by Fahim Ahmad, whom they were monitoring in an anti-terrorism investigation. The arrests led the unionised Canada Border Services Agency agents to campaign for the right to carry sidearms themselves, citing Dirie and Mohamed's arrests. Progressive Conservative party leader John Tory wrote an open letter to Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty suggesting that the arrests indicated more attention must be paid to weapons smuggling at the border. American Citizens Committee for the Right