Seventeen Canadian residents were in custody Saturday on terrorism- related charges, including plots to use explosives in attacks on Canadian soil, authorities said.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they arrested 12 male adults and five youth and foiled plans for terrorist attacks against targets in southern Ontario.
Officials showed evidence of bomb making materials, a computer hard drive, camouflage uniforms and what appears to be a door with bullet holes in it at a news conference Saturday morning.
"This group took steps to acquire three tons of ammonium nitrate and other components necessary to create explosive devices," said assistant Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Mike McDonell said.
McDonell said that is three times the amount used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
The arrests were made Friday, with some 400 officers involved.
McDonell said the suspects were either citizens or residents of Canada and had trained together.
"The men arrested yesterday are Canadian residents from a variety of backgrounds. For various reasons they appeared to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaida," said Luc Portelance, the assistant director of operations with CSIS _ Canada's spy agency.
Heavily armed police officers ringed the Durham Regional Police Station in the city of Pickering, just east of Toronto, as the suspects were brought in late Friday night in unmarked cars which were drove into an underground garage.
The Toronto Star reported Saturday that Canadian youths in their teens and 20s, upset at the treatment of Muslims worldwide, were among those arrested.
The newspaper said they had trained at a camp north of Toronto and had plotted to attack CSIS's downtown office near the CN Tower, among other targets.
Melisa Leclerc, a spokeswoman for the federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, had no comment on the arrests.
In March 2004, Ottawa software developer Mohammad Momin Khawaja became the first Canadian charged under the country's Anti-Terrorism Act for alleged activities in Ottawa and London. Khawaja was also named, but not charged, in British for playing a role in a foiled bomb plot. He is being held in an Ottawa detention center, awaiting trial.
The Canadian anti-terrorism law was passed swiftly following the Sept. 11 assaults, particularly after Osama bin-Laden's named Canada one of five so-called Christian nations that should be targeted for acts of terror. The others, reaffirmed in 2004 by his al-Qaida network, were the United States, Britain, Spain and Australian, all of which have been victims of terrorist attacks.
The anti-terrorism law permits the government to brand individuals and organizations as terrorists and gives police the power to make preventive arrests of people suspected of planning a terrorist attack.
Though many view Canada as an unassuming neutral nation that has skirted terrorist attacks, it has suffered its share of aggression, including the 1985 Air India bombing, in which 329 people were killed, most of them Canadian citizens.
Intelligence officials believe at least 50 terror groups now have some presence in the North American nation and have long complained that the country's immigration laws and border security are too weak to weed out potential terrorists.
Related:
Canadians Used Internet Monitoring To Stop Terror Attack
Canada Discovers Terrorist Plot
Thomas Galvin asks: “For all those who are quick to blame the West for the world’s ills, what did Canada do to ‘deserve’ this?”
InstaPundit muses: “It’s also interesting that this happened at almost the same time as the major bust in London. So what’s cooking here in the United States?” A good quesiton.
Glenn also notes that “Internet monitoring” was a key aspect of the investigation that led to this bust. The Toronto Star has more on that aspect.
Michelle Malkin has a list of the would-be terrorists’ names. ThreatsWatch calls them “twelve adult Muslim jihadists and five juveniles…some of them second-generation Canadian citizens and some of them recent immigrants.” Canada’s National Post says they are “homegrown extremists…young followers of the al-Qaeda ideology.” The Star elaborates, calling them “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 authorities themselves called the plot “al Qaeda-inspired,” according to CNN.
Missing: One Suicide Vest (fitted with a chemical spray)
Terror Suspects Arrested in Canada with updates
Terror suspects demand Korans
The Times and Democrat has this little scary tidbit:
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.
“Alleged Canadian terror plot has worldwide links”
[Jeff Goldstein says:] Although to be sure, lots of buildings and public transit venues in a number of countries remains intact as a result—and thousands of innocent civilians were probably spared. Still, though—a small consolation indeed if it turns out some “spy agency” plucked a conversation out of space and used it to zero in on these guys.
I, too, wondered about the timing of this operation in relation to the recent London raid. With all the attention being given to our Southern Border, I can't think of a more perfect time for terrorists to use our long Northern Border. I wish I had more confidence in our intelligence services. It will be interesting to find out if the Georgia Tech arrestee and his compadre, who were arrested in March, spilled the beans that led to both the London and Toronto raids.
_________________________________
UPADATE via Instapundit :
ROGER SIMON: "I can't say I'm surprised it took eight paragraphs before the New York Times deigned to tell us what might be behind (have motivated) the arrest of 17 people in Ontario over the last couple of days. In fact it takes them six paragraphs before they even name any names. And of course they hasten first to make sure we know most of these men (not yet identified as Islamists) are "young people," shades of the French linguistic obsession with les jeunes, lest we might think them representative of a hostile ideology. This political bowdlerization is accomplished in paragraph four. Think for a moment how the Times would have constructed an article (has constructed many articles) about the malfeasance of US servicemen. They sure wouldn't bury the lede."
UPDATE: The sounds of silence.
ANOTHER UPDATE: More on the Canadian effort here.
And more on the post-bust spin here. There's also lots more over at Canadian newsblog Newsbeat1.
DON SURBER IS FISKING THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL on Haditha. Read the whole thing, and fire off a copy to Bill Keller.
The clearly evident Bush-bashing glee over this stuff is both pathetic and poisonous.
UPDATE: Dan Riehl compares the amount of coverage of Haditha and the terror busts.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: "So how long before Anderson Cooper reports that the mayor of Haditha has stated that there are rampant murders and rapes going on inside the Haditha Superdome?"
That hasn't happened yet?
Look, this is a serious matter. But the gleeful piling-on -- and there's a lot of that, as Surber demonstrates -- makes it seem less serious, not moreso. Those who would reduce war crimes to mere partisan footballs are not manning the bulwarks of moral seriousness, however much they might adopt that pose.
I recommend this column by Mark Steyn, too: "A superpower that wallows in paranoia and glorifies self-loathing cannot endure and doesn't deserve to." I could say the same thing for alleged "flagship" media operations.
Via Ace of Spades: Liberal Blogs Silent On Massive Terrorism Bust
Via Gateway Pundit:
Canadian Mounted Police Bust Up Toronto Terror Group
This is interesting news... When did Canada enter the War in Iraq? Isn't that the reason the terrorists hate us?
Hmm.
It'll be interesting to see what happens at trial and sentencing stage.
Posted by: linearthinker | 03 June 2006 at 05:51 PM