Posted on 6/5/2006, 1:18:39 PM by GMMAC
Plot targeted Peace Tower, police say
Complex operation leading to arrests of alleged terrorists shrouded in secrecy
TIMOTHY APPLEBY AND COLIN FREEZE
Globe and Mail
Monday, June 5, 2006
The ammonium nitrate was delivered. The targets were set. After two years of a stealthily assembled counterterrorism web of surveillance, wiretaps and informants, police were ready to swoop down.
The operation was so complex and tightly shrouded that everyone involved — including all the roughly 400 police officers who scooped up the 17 suspected Islamic extremists Friday and Saturday — had to sign the Official Secrets Act, pledging total discretion.
Targets of the alleged plot included political and economic symbols such as the Parliament Buildings and Peace Tower in Ottawa, along with the CN Tower and Toronto Stock Exchange in Toronto.
But long before the sensational details and spectacular arrests came the watching. Visits to certain Internet sites were observed and traced. When visitors met with some of those under surveillance, they were arrested as soon as they returned to the United States. When a group from the Toronto area visited a private recreation area in Ontario's cottage country, police appeared in force the next day and began to pore over the grounds.
And when the watching came to a head, what triggered the rapid wave of RCMP-led Toronto-area arrests was the Mounties' controlled delivery shortly before of three tonnes of ammonium nitrate in 25-kilogram bags — gardening fertilizer that, when mixed with fuel oil, can produce a lethal bomb of the type white supremacist Timothy McVeigh used in 1995 to destroy Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah building, killing 168 people.
Mr. McVeigh's truck bomb, however, was built with just one tonne of ammonium nitrate, a product sold at countless hardware and gardening stores.
The alleged conspirators' plans were evident, assistant RCMP commissioner Mike McDonell said.
“It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack. ... This group posed a real and serious threat. ... Our investigation and arrests prevented the assembly of explosive devices and attacks being carried out.”
As to targets, police would only say officially that all were in Southern Ontario and that Toronto's transit network of subway trains, buses and street cars is not thought to have been on the list.
The downtown Toronto office of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, in the shadow of the CN Tower, was also believed to be at risk.
It appears the suspects were working to a timeline. Asked if he knew when the group planned to strike, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair replied that he did, without elaborating.
What's clear is that members of the alleged terrorist ring obtained the three tonnes of ammonium nitrate through what is termed “a controlled delivery,” commonly deployed in big drug busts, whereby police help arrange the delivery of the contraband (or something resembling it) and then arrest the recipients.
Shortly after the three pallets of chemicals arrived at their undisclosed destination, the raids in Toronto and Mississauga began, continuing into the early hours of Saturday and resulting in the arrest of 12 men, as well as five male teenagers whose identity is shielded under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
A police officer loads terrorism suspect
Shareef Abdelhaleem, 30, of Mississauga,
into a holding van at the Durham Regional
Police Station on Saturday. (Nathan Denette/CP)
No other arrest warrants have been issued, police said.
Converting ammonium nitrate into bombs is nothing new. One year after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Irish Republican Army used it in a terrorist campaign in London and Manchester, as did the architects of the first World Trade Center bombings in 1993 and the 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa.
The huge bomb that killed 202 people at a pair of Bali nightclubs in 2002 was also fashioned from ammonium-nitrate bombs, which produce toxic clouds that burn and blind.
Police would not say where this three-tonne batch came from.
But because of the fertilizer's deadly potential, the Canadian Fertilizer Institute has for several years been working with police and retailers in efforts to spot orders for any unusually large sales.
And that looks to be what happened in this instance.
Asked about the delivery, Mr. McDonell said that as with chemical precursors used to manufacture illegal drugs, “Some of the distributors alert police to suspicious purchases.”
A controlled delivery does not constitute police entrapment unless it can be shown that the target was induced to do something he would not otherwise do.
Fifteen of the 17 accused appeared Saturday in a heavily guarded courtroom in Brampton, where bail applications that prosecutors will likely oppose will be heard Tuesday.
Six of the adults are from Mississauga and four from Toronto.
The other two men are in a Kingston-area penitentiary, serving two-year prison terms for trying to smuggle handguns and ammunition across the Peace Bridge at Fort Erie, Ont. All are Canadian residents, and the majority — including the five youths charged — were born in Canada.
“By our information, I would call them homegrown,” CSIS assistant operations director Luc Portelance told a Saturday media briefing where a 25-kilo bag of ammonium nitrate — not part of the delivery — and a crude cellphone detonator were displayed, along with a computer hard drive, a door riddled with bullet holes, and camping and paramilitary gear that included a 9-mm Luger handgun, a Rambo-style assault knife, camouflage fatigues, flashlights and two-way radios.
“Clearly they are motivated by things we see around the world. They are against the Western influence in Islamic countries.” And while none of the 17 are known to have any formal affiliation with al-Qaeda, Mr. Portelance described them as people who “have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaeda.”
All, including the juveniles, are jointly accused of 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, encompassing firearms and explosives offences, for the benefit of or in association with a terrorist group.
Named in the charges are Fahim Ahmad, 21, of Toronto; Zakaria Amara, 20, of Mississauga; Asad Ansari, 21, of Mississauga; Shareef Abdelhaleem, 30, of Mississauga; Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, of Mississauga; Mohammed Dirie, 22, of Kingston; Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, of Kingston; Jahmaal James, 23, of Toronto; Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, of Toronto; Steven Vikash Chand (alias Abdul Shakur), 25, of Toronto; Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, of Mississauga; and Saad Khalid, 19, of Mississauga.
Toronto Mayor David Miller said he was apprised of the investigation in January.
PING!
The terrorists assigned this mission, however, received large, discretely wrapped bundles of untraceable cash, and encouraging little handwritten "pick-me-up" notes from the Prime Minister. :)
"...All are Canadian residents, and the majority — including the five youths charged — were born in Canada."
I wonder what countries produced the minority.
In Canada, will the youths be tried as adults?
Peace tower a target by the ROP, eh? Ain't irony ironic ...
They must really hate Anne Murray.
You mean they didn't target Bryan Adams. Damn.
I wonder how many of these guys are converts to Islam?
LOL! Dang! :) Yeah... one of those was meant to be Bryan Adams. S'what I get for posting while sleepy!
Then Official Opposition Leader Stephen Harper
addresses "Stand With America" Rally
(one of many held Across Canada)
Toronto, April 4, 2003
Still on that canard, eh?
How does it happen that a "white supremacist" partners with a guy married to a Filipina?
Philippines. Isn't that where we needed to develop the .45, as the existing .38's just didn't stop the møøselimb fanatics???
... or, more likely: the "Most Determinedly Intent Upon Taking Pointless Offense at Joke's Punchline" category, instead.
There are more than enough smug, priggish little chowderheads competing in that category, as is. Do you really want to join them that desperately...? :)
They were trying to find the root cause! And still are.
It must be descrimination. Yes that's it. Could it be that the would be terrorists wanted jobs as doctors and lawyers, but all they can find is jobs at Tim Hortons? Yes that must be it!
The good news is that this will all be fogotten by tonight...the Stanley Cup series between Edmonton and Carolina begins this evening.
If it was not for the monitoring of phone calls and e-mails does anyone think this major bust would of been just as successful? Surely not most people hear on FR, but you can bet most on the left would be more angry at the means it took to arrest this terrorist than at the terrorist themselves.
You: "B: to paraphrase: There are more than enough smug, priggish little - plainly unduly provincial - chowderheads bashing ALL Canadians on FR and, accordingly, many conservatives no longer permit their counter-productive crap to slide by unchallenged."
You (Condensed Version): "Oh, yes, Yes! Oh, PLEASE!"
Fair enough, then. Consider yourself duly annointed, O Watchful, Fire-Breathing Online Watch-Dragon of Anne Murray's Good Name and Sacred Honor.
Solely in the interests of effective time management, however: okay if I just go ahead and refer to you "pinhead," for short...?
Cripes. Self-adore much...?
You should've included Celine Dion in your lists of targets.
Then you would have had the whole country supporting you.
:-)
Then you would have had the whole country supporting you. :)
Thank you, good sir (I do hope you are, in fact, a sir; these things are always so awkward, aren't they...?) for the most welcome and conclusive evidence that -- the odd, humorless twinkie notwithstanding -- Canadians ARE, in fact, possesed of excellent (and fully functional) senses of humor!
mmmmmmmmmmmm-WAHH!!! :)
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