Three tonnes of fertilizer seized in raid

Canadian Press via Sun Media ^ | 2006-06-03 | Mike Oliveira

[Clive]

TORONTO (CP) - It's a substance easily purchased every day at countless Canadian hardware and gardening stores, yet three tonnes of fertilizer - also known as ammonium nitrate - could have done catastrophic damage to Canadian terrorism targets.

"The quantity of course is alarming; it's quite astonishing," David Harris, a former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said in an interview from Ottawa on Saturday.

"It seems to suggest an almost rabid dedication to undertake something serious, whether as a major catastrophic explosion or a series of devastating assaults," said Harris, now a senior fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies.

Police said the arrests of 17 suspects late Friday foiled a series of terrorist attacks plotted against unspecified targets in southern Ontario, adding investigators had eliminated a "real and serious" threat.

The amount of fertilizer seized in the arrests was three times the quantity used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh used a truck filled with ammonium nitrate to carry out his attack, decimating a federal government building and killing 168 people.

Security experts speculated Saturday that truck bombs were likely what Canada's alleged terrorists had in mind.

"(Three tonnes) is enough for a really, really big truck bomb. Probably two or three of them," said John Thompson, a security specialist with

the Mackenzie Institute, a Toronto-based think-tank.

Police refused to say what the terror suspects considered targets, although officials ruled out the Toronto Transit Commission - a massive public transit system that includes buses, subways and streetcars.

Thompson said that makes sense, since a fertilizer-based truck bomb would be ineffective on the subway system.

But it opens up an almost endless spectrum of possibilities in Canada's largest city.

"You really can't use a truck bomb on a subway station but if you're trying to collapse a building, a truck bomb is perfect for it," he said. "How many tall office towers are there in Toronto? Or hospitals? Or schools? Or government buildings?"

While mass quantities of ammonium nitrate are supposed to be difficult to obtain, the safeguards are not impossible to circumvent, said David Finlayson, vice-president of science and risk management at the Canadian Fertilizer Institute.

For years the institute has been working with the government and law enforcement authorities to guard against the accumulation of fertilizer for illegal means, and has asked retailers to keep records of ammonium nitrate sales and protect fertilizer from theft.

"I would say there's been a growing concern," Finlayson said. "Obviously the bombing in Oklahoma City involved ammonium nitrate, and security measures were enhanced at that time. It's been a process of continual improvement or tightening down."

Retailers are encouraged to know their customers, trace where ammonium nitrate goes and ask about suspiciously large purchases.

"They have an idea - given the climate conditions of the particular season - of what kind of crop customers are growing, and they would typically know what amount is reasonable or a credible amount," Finlayson said, adding that three tonnes "is not out of whack with some particular agricultural operations."

He said a tonne of ammonium nitrate can be bought in bulk or someone could go from one source to another, buying several bags that weigh 25 kilograms or more without arousing suspicion.

"If you go to a (garden store) and say, 'I'd like 3,000 kilos of ammonium nitrate please,' you could do that, but you'd also get arrested shortly afterwards," Thompson said.

"But if you have say 15 people continuously buying small quantities of it, slipping into garden centres and buying 2.5 kilos here and five kilos there, you could amass it after a while."

Federal plans are in the works to improve the security of fertilizer with changes to the Explosives Act later this year, which will regulate explosive precursors such as ammonium nitrate.

[Clive]

Box photo:

A bag of fertilizer, not seized in
the raid, used in a press conference
for display purposes.
(CP/Aaron Harris)

[Clive]

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[fanfan]

Canada ping!

Please FReepmail me to get on or off this ping list.

[elli1]

3 tons = approx. 110 bags @ 25 kg each.

[Lewite]

To read a great article on Islam and The Harlot of Babylon, go to yourarmstoisrael.org and select "sermon notes" and pull up "The final End Time Beast".

[scrabblehack]

Tonne in this story means "metric ton" or 1000 kg (not 2000 lbm.) So it's 120 bags.

[jebeier]

Three Metric Tons is only 120 25 kg bags. It does not take a great great deal of dedication or sophistication to amass 125 25 kg bags of anything. Send a stupid kid out with a pickup truck and have him buy 4 bags at 30 locations, and you're done. You could have it in a week.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

I remember when they got the NI Assembly established first, Gerry Adams attempts to nominate Martin McGuinness as Minister for Agriculture - someone shouted from the Unionist side that he'd be in charge of the fertilizer explosives!

[fanfan]

They were probably right, too!

[Irish_Thatcherite]

They hit it right on the nail!

[tlb]

>>>>Three tonnes of fertilizer seized in raid

So I gather then it involves Shiites.

[Clive]

Think of a tonne as being roughly the equivalent of a what was called a long ton in Imperial measure, which is 2200 lbs as compared to a standard ton of 2000 ls.

So as ellil pointed out, the 3 tonnes is 3000 kg which is equivalent to a bit over 6600 lbs which is equivalent to about 3.3 tons or 3 long tons or 120 25 kg bags

[DManA]

Must throw in McVeigh's name to establish moral equivalancy between islam and - ?? well we're not sure what but islam isn't unique.

[BILL_C]

"The amount of fertilizer seized in the arrests was three times the quantity used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh used a truck filled with ammonium nitrate to carry out his attack, decimating a federal government building and killing 168 people."

When you see quotes like this, it's HOW the lies continue in the press until they become "facts." As well documented by Jayna Davis in her book THE THIRD TERRORIST, there were additional Iraqi agents involved in the bombing. These agents were defectors from Gulf War I and were invited into the United States. President Bush didn't understand what we were fighting and thousands of people have died because of this ignorance.

And like all conspiracy events that have been made so frequent with Democratic Presidents, witnesses say one thing happened but the Presidential controlled investigations have said something different, even if simple physics and reason are violated. We have the precedents that the press corps will just reprint what they are told to say.

And, we, the sheeple, whether on Free Republic or DU buy it hook, line and sinker.

[jerod]

Let's think of it this way... Three times as much as it took to blow-up the Federal building in Oklahoma. So it’s awful big bunch of explosive power.

[AmericanMade1776]

Alvin Chand, a brother of suspect Steven Vikash Chand, said outside the courthouse that his brother was innocent and authorities "just want to show they're doing something."

"He's not a terrorist, come on. He's a Canadian citizen," Chand said. "The people that were arrested are good people, they go to the mosque, they go to school, go to college."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060604/ap_on_re_ca/canada_terrorism_arrests

[AmericanMade1776]

They go to Mosque....they can not be terrorist....what a statement.

[Don Carlos]

The amount of fertilizer seized in the arrests was three times the quantity used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Since the Canadian story broke, I've seen this quote over and over again. The amount of fertilizer used in the OKC bombing was estimated to be 4800 to 5000 pounds.

One of many links to this figure is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Sold in the US, this would be 132 fifty pound bags.
Have some experience in mining, I can tell you that its "enough to move your mortgage," as our mine foreman liked to say.

[Dog]

Wait until the list of targets comes out...I think Canada is going to be stunned at the death toll that these jihadists had planned..