Major terror bust in Toronto

[IE]

At least 8 in 'terror' cell arrested as police foil possible attack on TTC (Toronto Subway System)






TORONTO - In a stunning development yesterday, police made a sweeping terrorist bust within the GTA and expected to make several more arrests throughout the night.

"The RCMP, CSIS and the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team arrested individuals throughout the GTA today in relation to terrorist-related offences," confirmed RCMP spokesman Corp. Michele Paradis.

As of about 9 p.m. last night, Paradis also added "there are ongoing arrests."

Though unconfirmed, sources have told the Sun police arrested a possible home-grown al-Qaeda terrorist cell operating in Toronto that had planned to bomb the subway as early as Monday.

Just three days ago, Sun columnist Joe Warmington wrote about two men spotted filming the subway system on May 23 at Keele station, which raised alarm bells with Toronto Police and CSIS.

But sources also tell the Sun that the RCMP "planted" that story with the media, though reasons remain unclear.

Police had been watching several alleged terrorist camps since 2004 -- one of which is reported to be in the Muskokas near Bracebridge and another near Thunder Bay, a police source told Warmington late last night.

"Recently some officers followed two men who left the camp near Thunder Bay and headed to Toronto," said the source.

Another Sun source said there was a similar "terrorist" camp near Barry's Bay -- within an hour's drive of several Ontario nuclear operations.

Other source also tell the Sun the arrested individuals were amassing weapons.

"This is huge, this is massive."

Sources cited by the Canadian Press corroborate this claim, saying the suspects were arrested in the Toronto area for allegedly "plotting an attack with explosives."

"It is very serious," said a source who asked not to be named. "These people had plans."

While the targets were unclear, the aim was to detonate an explosive device in Ontario, they said.

"That's the tool of choice for anybody who wants to cause damage."

The enforcement team also includes GTA police forces and the department of justice.

Officials remained tight-lipped about the nature of the arrests, refusing to reveal the number of people arrested, who was arrested, the nature of the terrorist activities, when or where the arrests were made, fuelling conflicting reports.

Some news outlets discounted allegations the subway or the CN Tower were targets, and claimed the terrorists involved are not directly afilliated with al-Qaeda, but were inspired by them.

Others pegged the number of arrested at eight, and said the investigation involved around a hundred officers.

In November of 2002, al-Qaeda singled out six countries for supporting "the White House gang of butchers." Among them: Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Australia and Canada. Terrorists bombed London's subway system last July, killing 52 people.

Meanwhile, a quiet Mississauga neighbourhood got a shocking visit from ETF officers who stormed the new subdivision and busted down the door of a Rosehurst Dr. home at about 6:30 p.m. One neighbour described the arrested man as heavyset, in his mid-50s with black hair and a beard, who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent.

At 7:15 p.m. last night, a highly unusual scene on the Gardiner Expressway raised the suspicions of Sun photo editor Rick VanSickle when he saw an ambulance flanked by two police cars driving east toward the city. VanSickle was between Islington and Royal York at the time and also saw a nondescript car and unmarked silver minivan with police lights parked at the side of the road.

"Normally when I see an ambulance there is no police escort. That's what struck me," he said.

The RCMP is expected to make some details available today at a news conference at the Toronto Congress Centre on Dixon Rd., also an unusual venue for such an announcement.

At the Durham Regional Police Station at Hwy. 2 and Brock Rd., where it was speculated the arrested are being detained, at least three police officers armed with machineguns patrolled the building, which was sealed off with yellow tape.

Scores of police cars, officers and dogs also kept vigil over the the heavily guarded building, keeping media outlets outside.

A convoy of SUVs, unmarked cars and minivans parked at the side of the building also appeared to hold some people.

 

[IE]

Three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a commonly used fertilizer used to make explosives, were recovered by police, who say that's three times the amount used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

"It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," said RCMP assistant commissioner Mike McDonell.

"If I can put this in context for you, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was completed with only one tonne of ammonium nitrate." "This group posed a real and serious threat," he added. "It had the capacity and intent to carry out these acts."


http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/06/03/1613034-cp.html

 

[gardenweasel]

way to go,canada...the mounties always get their man... :clap:

is it just me, or do you get the impression that a number of western governments might be acting now to try to defang iran's proxy hit squads, in preparation for what might happen after we take some genuine action against iran in the near term?...

just a theory...

btw...is there an aclu in canada?

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

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

 

[AR182]

i saw some of the news conference & especially liked what one said... that canadians are not immune to terrorist attacks.....

 

[gardenweasel]

how could they possibly abridge the civil rights of the citizenry by monitoring the internet?.....

the gall of those canadians...(sarcasm)...

seriously, am fully prepared to actually become a hockey fan after this one....

the west..if united in purpose and determination...can be very formidable,indeed...

 

[AR182]

i just heard that there is a possible connection to people in georgia....

 

[IE]

Plot began in chat room
CSIS monitored discussions on bombing targets



For most Canadians, ammonium nitrate ? even after it was used to destroy the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, including dozens of kids in a daycare centre ?is nothing much more than a commonly used plant fertilizer.

Farmers buy and use it by the tonne, mixing it into the soil to ensure a bountiful crop.

But mix ammonium nitrate with the inflammatory rhetoric of an Internet chat room, and it instantly acquires the potential to become something entirely different, needing only the addition of a little fuel oil to turn it into a lethal bomb.

So when a shadowy group of disaffected urban youth began talking in an Internet chat room in the fall of 2004 espousing anti-Western views, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was listening.

The spy agency, and an alphabet soup of other security agencies across the continent, closely monitor such sites, where talk may sometimes turn to buildings and bombs and bringing global jihad home to North America, to Canada.

Often it's just that ? talk ? but when CSIS began monitoring the sites allegedly used by some of the 17 men and youths arrested on terrorism-related charges in a sweeping series of raids across the GTA Friday evening, the Canadian spy agency heard enough to remain interested, and increased surveillance of the group.

While CSIS and police typically won't talk about their operational methods, the available techniques range from monitoring electronic communications, from cell phones and landlines to emails and computers, to physically following persons of interest as they move about and talk to others.

Four months after the surveillance began, two Americans, from the Atlanta, Ga., area, popped onto the radar.

Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee had been communicating by email with the Canadian group, investigators allege, and in March 2005 the two hopped on a Greyhound bus, paying $280 (U.S.) for two round-trip tickets to Toronto, where, according to U.S. court documents, they were to meet with "like-minded Islamists."

"According to Ahmed ... they met regularly with at least three subjects of an FBI international terrorism investigation," the court documents allege, and discussed "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike."

By now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was involved, and also monitoring members of the Canadian group. The federal police service was brought into the case Nov. 17, 2004, by CSIS agents who believed they had enough information to warrant a criminal investigation.

According to the Los Angeles Times, U.S. authorities were also watching the two Americans, and at some point discovered communications between the men in Canada and Atlanta and other suspected terrorists overseas, including a group arrested in London last fall that counted among its members a computer specialist who used the Arabic word irhabi ? for terrorist ? as his Internet handle, Irhabi007.

Talk in the group was wide-ranging, according to an American law enforcement official, "about a whole range of targets." Officials and U.S. court documents allege group members were scouting targets that included Canadian government buildings, American oil refineries, and a U.S. tower that they believed controlled global positioning systems used in aviation.

Federal prosecutors in New York also told a recent hearing Sadequee and Ahmed had visited Washington and videotaped the U.S. Capitol, the World Bank headquarters and some fuel storage facilities.

They were charged in March and April and are awaiting trial.

Ahmed, a Pakistani native who has pleaded not guilty, arrived in the U.S. with his family when he was about 12 and is now an American citizen; Sadequee, whose family came from Bangladesh, was born in Virginia; he has been denied bail and is awaiting trial.

In August, 2005, Canadian investigators were watching closely as a car tried to cross back into Canada across the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie. Pulled over by a student working with the Canadian Border Services Agency, the car was rented by Fahim Ahmad, 22 ? arrested as part of Friday's sweep ? for two others, 24-year-old Yasin Abdi Mohamed of Toronto and Ali Dirie, 22, last of Markham.

Mohamed was found with a loaded handgun tucked in his waistband; Dirie had two pistols taped to his inner thighs; both are now serving two-year sentences.

No charges were laid against Ahmad for making the vehicle available. Not then.

By last winter federal investigators were becoming increasingly concerned about the Canadian group, stressing that it shouldn't be underestimated. Among the things that set alarm bells ringing was an alleged visit to a northern Ontario "training camp" by group members; what they did there or how long they stayed hasn't been revealed.

But investigators allege some of the group's members made a video showing them imitating military manoeuvres. And, police say, the suspects had allegedly acquired guns.

By February, intelligence analysts saw the group as the country's greatest terrorism threat, and called an unusual high-level briefing for chiefs of Ontario's police forces, including Toronto police Chief Bill Blair.

Not long after that investigators brought Toronto Mayor David Miller into the loop, alerting him to a terror investigation that might include a Toronto building as its target.

Although no one is saying so officially, the CSIS headquarters, on Front St. in the shadow of the CN Tower, was among the possible targets ? but not, officials stressed during a news conference Saturday, the TTC.

The lengthy investigation took on added urgency this month when talk in the group allegedly turned to acquiring three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, enough to build several powerful bombs.

The rental truck used by Timothy McVeigh to destroy the eight-storey Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was loaded with only a third of that amount; his victims included 168 dead and more than 800 wounded.

Like the CSIS building, the Murrah complex was filled with law enforcement offices.

By the end of last week, investigators felt they had enough evidence to move in on the group.

Although police haven't officially said so, sources have told the Star's Michelle Shephard that the final act in the multi-year investigation came when federal agents intercepted the group's order for the fertilizer, and arranged to have it delivered by truck.

But, the Star has learned, police switched the fertilizer with a harmless powder before making the delivery.

After the deal was done, the handcuffs came out.

At around the same time an elite team led by the RCMP's anti-terrorism task force, comprising federal agents and police officers from forces including Toronto, York, Durham and Peel, began swooping down on locations in Mississauga and Toronto.

Heavily armed officers and armoured vehicles were used in the raids, and police say they met with no resistance in arresting 12 adult males and five juveniles. Most were processed that night at a heavily-guarded Durham police station in Pickering, and appeared in Brampton court the next morning, also under heavy security.

On Saturday, at a 10 a.m. news conference, investigators began revealing some of what they know.

Chiefs of the Toronto, Peel, York and Durham police forces, and representatives from the OPP and CSIS, flanked RCMP Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell as he outlined what police say were their plans for the fertilizer.

"It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," McDonell said. "If I can put this in context for you, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was completed with only one tonne of ammonium nitrate.

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

Behind him, a tabletop held evidence from the Friday evening raids, including a 9-mm Luger pistol, military fatigues, a grab-bag of items ranging from two-way radios, knives and flashlights to duct tape, and a sample bag of ammonium nitrate.

Six of the accused adults are from Mississauga, four from Toronto and two are serving time in a Kingston prison on gun-smuggling charges. Most of the men are in their 20s, although one is 30, another 43.

Police have said they will not discuss the five juveniles arrested during the sweep.

Charges against the men ? who return to Brampton court Tuesday ? include participating in or contributing to the activity of a terrorist group, including training and recruitment; providing or making available property for terrorist purposes; and the commission of indictable offences including firearms and explosives offences for the benefit of or in association with a terrorist group.

 

[IE]

This marks only the second time that such charges have been laid since the Criminal Code was amended in 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to include terrorism offences.

It's also the first time police have made arrests to stop what they allege was an imminent terror attack on Canadian soil.

For neighbours of the 10 men and five juveniles who appeared in Brampton court Saturday ? Yasin Abdi Mohamed and Ali Dirie, in prison in Kingston, did not appear ? the arrests and charges came mostly as a shock.

They talked of quiet men, religious men, who played basketball and went to school and looked for jobs, of an elder who mentored younger men, but mostly, of men who kept to themselves, coming and going silently to and from their homes in Mississauga and Toronto.

"They never spoke to anyone," said one neighbour.

One youngster talked of the older brother, 19, who'd often disappear, for weeks at a time, without telling anyone where he was going.

"I heard he was going to some camp," the younger brother said. "But I don't know anything about it."

But eventually the older brother and his friends would reappear, the boy recalled, usually with a gift.

"They brought me a lot of stuff, like army suits and caps," the boy said. "Sometimes, he'll go get pizza."

 

[gardenweasel]

the liberal media reports on the jihadis arrested in toronto, expressing shock that these young canadian-born muslims had “somehow become radicalized.”

well, the shocks just keep on comin’....... because amazingly, astoundingly, in some inexplicable way that surpasses all understanding, some of the suspects were probably radicalized in a mosque....

i know....hard to believe....

a very shrewd ponzi game they have going here...the nebulous and decentralized nature of islamic authority means islam can never be at fault whenever one of its preachers is caught spreading hate..... that was just one bad apple, a "freelancer".....

you have to admire the strategery...

and the msm...buys it hook, line and sinker...instead of useless,ridiculous stings at nascar races,we`ll know things are starting to change when the msm starts airing undercover videos from inside mosques.....but don`t hold your breath...

 

[smurphy]

What media do you watch/ listen to weasel? I'm not getting any of the same slant as you on this or the soldiers/civilian incident. Are you sure your not just on a media witch hunt, and then when you see some tiny bit of bias in one out of 20 reports, you blow it up and yell something about the liberal msm? CNN, MSNBC ....I'm not seeing any of this supposed bias on these issues that you won't shut up about.