Replies

CSIS: terror cell busted
Bomb expert among four Algerians in Toronto

Stewart Bell
National Post

Thursday, November 03, 2005

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=aa8696a1-5a53-40ca-868a-3c8f6009581c

TORONTO - Canadian counter- terrorism investigators have dismantled a
suspected terrorist cell in Toronto whose members included an
al-Qaeda-trained explosives expert, the National Post has learned.

The cell consisted of four Algerian refugee claimants who had lived in
Canada for as long as six years and were alleged members of a radical
Islamic terror faction called the Salafist Group for Call and Combat.

The central figure of the Toronto-area cell was a former al-Qaeda
training camp instructor who studied bomb-making at Osama bin Laden's Al
Farooq and Khaldun training camps in eastern Afghanistan.

The group was watched by intelligence officers before being broken
apart in an inter-agency operation involving the Canadian Security
Intelligence Service, Canada Border Services Agency and police.

A senior CSIS counterterrorism official, Larry Brooks, announced the
dismantling of the cell at a closed-door national security workshop held
this week at a hotel north of Toronto.

Mr. Brooks told workshop delegates that three members of the group were
deported this summer and the key figure left Canada voluntarily in
March, 2004, after he was confronted by investigators.

The investigation was described as ongoing.

The group was unrelated to Canada's most notorious Algerian terror
network, the Groupe Fateh Kamel in Montreal, whose most infamous member,
Ahmed Ressam, tried to blow up Los Angeles airport in 1999.

But there were parallels between the Montreal and Toronto groups,
notably that the members of both were failed Algerian refugee claimants who
had learned how to manufacture explosives at the Khaldun training camp.

The case "is a prime example of inter-agency co-operation," Mr. Brooks
told delegates. CSIS was the lead agency in the investigation, but
police and immigration enforcement officers from the CBSA in the Niagara
region were also involved at various stages.

"CSIS's mandate is to collect, analyze and report threat-related
intelligence to government. This means that effectively, our intelligence is
shared with a variety of domestic and international security
intelligence and law enforcement partners," Barbara Campion, the CSIS
spokeswoman, said yesterday.

"CSIS does not discuss details of specific cases," she added.

But on Monday, Mr. Brooks, the chief of counterterrorism for the
Toronto region, gave an outline of the case to delegates at the National
Security Workshop 2005, a federal initiative that brought together security
officials and representatives of Ontario industries involved in
critical infrastructure, such as telephone, hydro and transit.

Mr. Brooks did not name the alleged terror-cell members, but during his
presentation he showed several photographs, including what appeared to
be surveillance photos taken in a parking lot.

A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington, D.C., claimed 600 of the estimated 3,000 foreign fighters
in Iraq are Algerians, making them the largest contingent, ahead of
even Saudis.

The Salafist group, better known as the GSPC (short for Groupe
Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat), is the leading Algerian terrorist
group. It is a breakaway faction of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group
and is aligned with bin Laden and al-Qaeda's Iraq leader, Abu Mussab
Zarqawi.

The federal Cabinet added the GSPC to Canada's list of banned terrorist
groups in November, 2002. "The GSPC is a radical Sunni Muslim group
seeking to establish an Islamist government in Algeria," Public Safety and
Emergency Preparedness Canada said in a background report.

"The GSPC has adopted a policy that violence should be targeted on
security or military targets, foreigners, intellectuals and administrative
staff. The GSPC is believed to have been active outside Algeria. The
group has been affiliated to Osama bin Laden and groups financed by him."

The ringleader of the Toronto cell was an Algerian-born member of the
GSPC who entered Canada on Aug. 8, 1998, using a forged Saudi passport
and made a refugee claim that was ultimately turned down.

Initially, CSIS began preparing a national security certificate that
was to be used to deport him, but instead authorities subjected him to
"confrontation interviews," a counterterrorism tactic that is sometimes
used to make suspected terrorists know they are being closely watched.

The explosives expert left on his own shortly afterward on March 7,
2004, and the three others were later arrested and deported to U.S. border
crossings because they had entered Canada from the United States.

The operation is the latest indication that trained terrorists, some of
whom are versed in bomb-making methods and have links to bin Laden and
his al-Qaeda network, have been living in Canada.

"We know that terrorists are in our own backyard," Inspector Jamie
Jagoe, the officer in charge of the RCMP Integrated National Security
Enforcement Team for Ontario, which co-hosted the workshop, told delegates.

During his presentation, Insp. Jagoe showed slides of several suspected
terrorists who had lived in Canada, including Amer El-Maati, Abderraouf
Jdey, Mahmoud Jaballah, Mohamed Mahjoub, Ressam, Mohammed Jabarah,
Abdul Rahman Jabarah and Ahmed Said Khadr.

While few terrorists in Canada aside from Ressam have built bombs here,
he said they are "involved in other aspects of terrorism" such as
fundraising, recruiting, propaganda and arms trading. "All of these
contribute to the cause as much as someone building a bomb in their basement."

The terrorist presence in Canada must be taken seriously because both
bin Laden and an al-Qaeda targeting manual have listed the country as
one of a handful of nations that should be attacked, Insp. Jagoe said.