Canada Nabs 17 Terror Suspects in Toronto

[Desertdog]

Canada Nabs 17 Terror Suspects in Toronto
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/03/D8I0V6NG0.html

By BETH DUFF-BROWN
Associated Press Writer




Canadian police foiled a homegrown terrorist attack by arresting 17 suspects, apparently inspired by al-Qaida, who obtained three times the amount of explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing, officials said Saturday.

The FBI said the Canadian suspects may have had "limited contact" with two men recently arrested on terrorism charges in Georgia. About 400 regional police and federal agents participated in the arrests Friday and early Saturday.

"These individuals were allegedly intent on committing acts of terrorism against their own country and their own people," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement. "As we have said on many occasions, Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism."

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested the suspects, ages 43 to 19, on terrorism charges including plotting attacks with explosives on Canadian targets. The suspects were either citizens or residents of Canada and had trained together, police said.

The group had taken steps to acquire three tons of ammonium nitrate and other bomb-making materials _ three times the amount used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injured more than 800, said assistant Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Mike McDonell.

"This group posed a real and serious threat," McDonell said. "It had the capacity and intent to carry out these attacks."

Luc Portelance, assistant director of operations with Canada's spy agency, CSIS, said the suspects "appeared to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaida" but that investigators have yet to prove a link to the terror network.

Five of the suspects were led in handcuffs Saturday to the Ontario Court of Justice, which was surrounded by snipers and bomb-sniffing dogs. A judge told the men not to communicate with one another and set their first bail hearing for Tuesday.

Tight security required visitors to the court to remove their shoes to pass through three checkpoints guarded by police carrying assault rifles and submachine guns.

FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko, in Washington, D.C., said there may have been a connection between the Canadian suspects and a Georgia Tech student and another American who had traveled to Canada to meet with Islamic extremists to discuss locations for a terrorist strike.

Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, U.S. citizens who grew up in the Atlanta area, were arrested in March.

Officials at the news conference displayed evidence of bomb-making materials _ including a red cell phone wired to what appeared to be an explosives detonator inside a black toolbox _ a computer hard drive, camouflage uniforms, flashlights and walkie-talkies. They also showed a flimsy white door riddled with bullet holes but refused to say where it was from.

According to a report Saturday in The Toronto Star citing unidentified police sources, the suspects attended a terrorist training camp north of Toronto and had plotted to attack the Canadian spy agency's downtown Toronto office, among other targets in Ontario province. Authorities refused to confirm those reports.

The suspects live in either Toronto, Canada's financial capital and largest city, or the nearby cities of Mississauga or Kingston.

Rocco Galati, lawyer for two suspects from Mississauga, said Ahmad Ghany, 21, is a health sciences graduate from McMaster University in Hamilton. He was born in Canada, the son of a medical doctor who emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago.

Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, is a computer programmer who emigrated from Egypt 20 years ago with his father, now an engineer with Atomic Energy of Canada, the lawyer said.

The charges came under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act. It was passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 assaults _ and after Osama bin-Laden named Canada as one of five "Christian" nations that should be targeted for terror attacks. The other countries, the United States, Britain, Spain and Australia, have all been targeted.

Portelance, of Canada's spy agency, said it was the nation's largest counterterrorism operation since the adoption of the act and that more arrests were possible.

 

[Desertdog]

Related Story

How Internet monitoring sparked a CSIS investigation into a suspected homegrown terror cell

MICHELLE SHEPHARD
STAFF REPORTER
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...044&call_pageid=976163513378&col=969048863474

Last night's dramatic police raid and arrest of as many as a dozen men — with more to come — marks the culmination of Canada's largest ever terrorism investigation into an alleged homegrown cell.

The chain of events began two years ago, sparked by local teenagers roving through Internet sites, reading and espousing anti-Western sentiments and vowing to attack at home, in the name of oppressed Muslims here and abroad.

Their words were sometimes encrypted, the Internet sites where they communicated allegedly restricted by passwords, but Canadian spies back in 2004 were reading them. And as the youths' words turned into actions, they began watching them.

According to sources close to the investigation, the suspects are teenagers and men in their 20s who had a relatively typical Canadian upbringing, but — allegedly spurred on by images of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and angered by what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims at home — became increasingly violent.

Police say they acquired weapons, picked targets and made detailed plans.

They travelled north to a "training camp" and made propaganda videos imitating jihadists who had battled in Afghanistan. At night, they washed up at a Tim Hortons nearby.

One was a math and chemistry whiz from Scarborough who grew up to become a 22-year-old husband and father.

It's unclear why the authorities decided to act on their suspicions yesterday. None of these allegations has been proven in court, where the suspects are expected to appear for the first time this morning.

Sources say the arrests involve a "homegrown" terrorism cell — Western youths who have never set foot in Afghanistan but allegedly were radicalized here, and who are thought to be potentially as dangerous as the cells that once took orders from Osama bin Laden. Western governments, including Canada's, have repeatedly warned of this phenomenon and blamed recent attacks, such as last July's bombings in London, as the work of such groups.

The Canadian investigation involves a complicated web of connections, with alleged ties to two men from Georgia who came to Toronto in March 2005 to meet with "like-minded Islamic extremists," according to U.S. court documents.

Details of the Canadian investigation will be officially released this morning at a news conference.


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For the spies who work on the 10th floor of a Front St. office building, with the CN Tower looming above and a hub of Toronto's tourist district buzzing below, this investigation was personal.

The group arrested yesterday allegedly had a list of targets, sources have told the Star, and the Toronto headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was one of them.

So were the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa and a smattering of other high-profile, heavily populated areas. But since most of the suspects lived in the GTA, it was the potential threat to the spy service's office and the chaos an attack would create in the heart of Toronto that concerned CSIS most.

According to sources, the suspects allegedly planned to target the spy service because many of them had encountered agents early in the investigation, when they were interviewed and put under surveillance. They also were allegedly angered by media reports accusing CSIS of racial profiling of Muslims.

Many of the agents were known to members of the group only by aliases, but the belief that the office had been targeted led to months of unease among CSIS staff, sources said.

Some of the group's members had even been spotted taking notes around the building, and at least one had reportedly visited the basement, one source told the Star.

The investigation began back in 2004, when CSIS was monitoring Internet sites and tracing the paths of Canadians believed to have ties to international terrorist organizations. Local youths espousing fundamentalist views drew special attention, sources say.

Since it was created 21 years ago, the spy service's mandate has been to protect Canada's security. It is not a police force; its agents don't carry weapons, have no power of arrest and traditionally have preferred to stay out of public view.

But CSIS does have a relationship with the RCMP, albeit one traditionally fraught with turf wars and communication problems, and the focus of criticism and concern since 9/11.

The two federal agencies work independently, but when CSIS is monitoring someone who could be prosecuted criminally, the spy service notifies the Mounties in what's known as an "advisory letter."

 

[crazed_ss]

Maybe the Minutemen should go deploy on the Northern border.

 

[longeyes]

You know, you'd think this story was about the ghost of Timothy McVeigh rather than radical Islam, wouldn't you?

 

[longeyes]

Maybe the Minutemen should go deploy on the Northern border.

That will happen, just give it time. Canada refuses to acknowledge what they are doing to themselves.

 

[Hyunchback]

I'm more concerned with someone on the Muslim side wising up to the totally porous border we have down south. Down there they pay the Federals some chump change (less than the cost of flight school for four) and no one will bother them while they accumulate whatever they want and drive it up north.

It's stupid to believe that the guys in Canada were the only cell in action.

 

[longeyes]

Canada's a perfect test case of Liberalism In Action. Should be lively times ahead.

 

[Cosmoline]

What amazes me is how few news outlets are willing to mention the fact that all of these guys were MUSLIM FUNDIS. Terrorism is a tactic. We're not at war with a tactic.