Sting could not be reached for comment.
Posted on 06/04/2006 9:03:50 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
MISSISSAUGA, Ontario (AP) -
0603dvs-canada-terror The Royal Canadian Mounted Police itself delivered three tons of potential bomb-making material to a group that authorities said wanted to launch a string of attacks inspired by al-Qaida, according to a news report Sunday.
The Toronto Star said the sting unfolded when investigators delivered the ammonium nitrate to the group of Muslim Canadians, then moved in quickly on what officials called a homegrown terror ring.
The newspaper said that investigators learned of the group's alleged plan to bomb targets around Ontario, then controlled the sale and transport of the fertilizer.
Authorities refused to discuss the Star's story and have revealed few details of the purported plot, or how the sting developed.
Police arrested 12 adults, ages 19 to 43, and five suspects younger than 18 Friday and Saturday on charges including plotting attacks with explosives on Canadian targets.
The oldest, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, led prayers at a storefront mosque attended by some 40 to 50 families down the street from his home in a middle-class neighborhood of Mississauga, west of Toronto.
Imam Qamrul Khanson said the language of Jamal's Friday night prayers had a more strident tone than other prayer leaders', but there was never any talk of terrorism or violence.
Khanson said at least three of the suspects regularly prayed at the Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education.
"Here we always preach peace and moderation," Khanson said at the one-room mosque.
"I have faith that they have done a thorough investigation," Khanson said of authorities. "But just the possession of ammonium nitrate doesn't prove that they have done anything wrong."
Officials said the operation involved some 400 intelligence and law-enforcement officers and was the largest counterterrorism operation in Canada since the adoption of Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Citing an unnamed Canadian federal official, The Canadian Press reported that Web surfing and e-mail among the suspects led to the start of the probe in 2004.
"The Internet was, according to the police, was a very important part of their activities," Canada's ambassador to Washington, Michael Wilson, said in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition."
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the operation was "obviously a great success for the Canadians."
The 17 suspects represent a spectrum of Canadian society, from the unemployed to the college-educated. The 12 adults live in Toronto, Mississauga and Kingston, Ontario.
Police said the suspects, all citizens or residents of Canada, had trained together.
Cpl. Michele Paradis, a spokeswoman for the Mounties, said no more arrests were expected in coming days.
"Once we once analyze and sort through everything that was seized as a result there may be (more arrests)," she said. "At this point we are confident that we have the majority of people."
Rocco Galati, a lawyer for two of the men from Mississauga, said: "Both of their families are very well-established professionals, well-established families, no criminal pasts whatsoever.
He described Ahmad Ghany, 21, as a Canada-born health sciences graduate of McMaster University whose father, a physician, emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago in 1955.
His other client, Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, is an unmarried computer programmer who emigrated from Egypt at age 10 with his father, Galati said.
Two suspects, Mohammed Dirie, 22, and Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, already are in an Ontario prison serving two-year terms for possession of illegal weapons.
Neighbors said the oldest suspect, Jamal, was often home and did not seem to work regularly, although his wife drove a schoolbus. The couple has three small children, neighbors said.
Brazilian immigrant Jerry Tavares said Jamal was unfriendly and rarely spoke with neighbors.
Lawyers and relatives of other suspects could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Mike McDonnell, an assistant commissioner with the Mounties, said Saturday that the amount of ammonium nitrate acquired by the alleged terror cell was three times that used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people and injuring more than 800.
The fertilizer is safe by itself, but when mixed with fuel oil or other ingredients, it makes a powerful explosive.
There was no indication that Canadian police altered the fertilizer to make it unusable in a bomb.
The FBI said the Canadian suspects might have had "limited contact" with two men recently arrested on terrorism charges in Georgia. There was no indication Sunday, however, that the 17 detainees were trying to plan an attack in the United States.
Another imam, Aly Hindy, said he knew nine of the suspects and complained that Canada's spy agency, CSIS, has unfairly targeted his mosque and congregants for years.
"They have been harassed by CSIS agents and this is what they come up with?" Hindy said. "I'm almost sure that most of these people will be freed."
Engineer Mohammed Abdelhaleen said he feared his son, Shareef, had already been convicted in the court of public opinion.
"He just goes and prays in a mosque," the father said. "That's all he does."
Muslim leaders voiced worries about a backlash.
A mosque in northwest Toronto was vandalized, with 25 windows and three doors smashed, police said.
Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, told The Associated Press that he and other Muslim leaders were getting threatening e-mails.
----
Associated Press writer Rob Gillies contributed to this report from Toronto.
--
Sting could not be reached for comment.
Think I'll drop them a note. LOL
np@canadianislamiccongress.com
liberals and democrats will claim entrapment.
*****************************
By Michelle Malkin · June 04, 2006 07:15 PM
LGF notes that a leading Muslim leader blames Canada for not spending enough money buying off "vulnerable Canadian Muslim youth."
It's always the West's fault, isn't it?
Sure. I'm always looking for THREE TONS of ammonium nitrate for my houseplants. This is what I find so infuriating about the "religion of peace" and their handmaiden CAIR: they're always so innocent and discriminated against when their ranting and raving terror-jihadists get caught. The "religion of peace" had better start denouncing terrorism and actively finding and revealing those who preach it, or they're all going to find themselves in trouble.
Yep. They unfairly bought the fertalizer and unfairly planned to build bombs, and unfairly just happened to pray with your friends. It is just so unfair!
Canadian Islamic Congress Blames Canada
***********************************************
Dr. Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress blames the Canadian government for the jihadis suspected of plotting mass murder: Canadian Islamic Congress | Media Communique.
****************************
Following a wave of arrests overnight on June 3 that led to more than a dozen Toronto-area men and teens being held on charges of suspected terrorism, the Canadian Islamic Congress issued a statement saying:
* All suspects involved in the current investigation — those now arrested and any who may yet be charged — must be treated as innocent until proven guilty;
* If and when any individuals are proven guilty under Canadian anti- terrorism legislation, then they are criminals. Canada’s 750,000 Muslims should not be made guilty-by-association, either in the Canadian media or through any public pronouncements;
* We praise today’s statements by CSIS, RCMP and the Mayor of Toronto for putting today’s arrests into proper context as criminal activities by suspects;
* It is irresponsible for our Prime Minster to paint today’s arrests as a battle between “us” and “them”. Such statement puts all Canadian Muslims in great danger;
Governments, both federal and provincial, must fund legitimate academic research to diagnose this serious social problem and provide scientific solutions to it. Today’s CIC statement elaborated saying: “There is no solid social science research that details why and how imported extremist ideologies are finding their way to some vulnerable Canadian Muslim youth. Zero dollars were spent by governments to investigate and follow up on such disturbing trends.”
Elmasry is quite famous himself, for saying on Canadian television that all Israelis are legitimate targets for suicide bombers.
Maybe they just wanted 3 tons of ammonium nitrate for their wives to grow African Violets on the kitchen window sill.
j
Take a good, hard look at what's going on here
************************************************
| LUCAS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR |
| A truck containing a group of suspects leaves Brampton court yesterday in a heavily guarded caravan supported by helicopters and Emergency Task Force supervision. |
|
Unless you've been had.
Either way, the time has long passed for domestic bliss born of ignorance, virtue and wilful denial.
For everyone who thought Canada could cower in a corner of the planet, unnoticed and unthreatened by evil men — even when the most menacing of a very bad lot has twice referenced this country as a target for attack — take a good, hard look at what's been presented and what's being alleged.
Three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, thrice the amount used by Timothy McVeigh to demolish a government building in Oklahoma City. Cellphone detonators. Switches. Computer hard drive. A 9-mm pistol. Soldering gun. Camouflage gear.
And 17 males — born here or reared here, certainly settled here, some of them little more than children — formally remanded yesterday on terrorism-related charges.
If the accusations prove true, this isn't just slumming with jihad. For the benighted who claim that the war on terrorism is terrorism: Here is your war.
Could be, of course, all a wild misunderstanding, colossal police blundering, systemic racism, nothing more sinister than a barbeque in the country.
Could be the thing it appears, though — evidence of an enemy within.
And not just those accused who allegedly plotted to blow things up in southern Ontario — maybe the CN Tower, perchance the baseball stadium; most likely venues of large gathering, because the objective of terrorism, which this may or may not be, isn't merely to slaughter but to bludgeon the living with fear, to silhouette in gore one's utter vulnerability.
These accused wanted, if intelligence experts are correct (and they've been wrong before), to kill you.
Your children, your parents, your lovers, your neighbours.
Wouldn't matter, the colour of your skin, your mother tongue, the God that you pray to or if you pray at all. Wouldn't matter even if you happen to equate George W. Bush with Osama bin Laden.
The Jihad Generation — nothing alleged about it — makes no distinctions.
Come such a day, Toronto will look like London ... Madrid ... Bali ... New York City.
Blood streaming, mangled metal, severed limbs, inchoate rage and immeasurable grief.
"This group posed a real and serious threat," said Mike McDonell, assistant RCMP commissioner in charge of criminal intelligence and national security. "It had the capacity and intent to carry out the attacks. Our investigation and . . . arrests prevented the assembly of any bombs and the attacks from being carried out."
Further: "We must remain vigilant. Canada is susceptible to criminal terrorist activity as much as any other country."
If such a thing had occurred, if it were still to occur, many would have cheered, if not overtly here in Canada, then without shame in distant places. And others, innumerable others, would turn themselves inside out to rationalize, exculpate, mitigate, mock, shift the blame to something societal or political or self-inflicted.
It takes no sophistication to connect non-existent dots, from Mississauga to Afghanistan, from grievances nurtured in the suburbs of Toronto to a so-called global crusade against Islam, as if the West is responsible for the oppression inflicted upon Muslims, in Muslim nations, by Muslim leaders.
It requires, increasingly, little empirical evidence to excuse the radicalism of pupa militants, including those who enjoy the benefits of our own generous, inclusive and hyper-tolerant society. This is the constituency that protects — tacitly encourages — the nihilism of those driven to violent distraction by what they see as endless victimization of their tribe, a purported world-wide Islamaphobia that can only be redressed by random atrocities.
How quickly, do you think, will these arrests — the judicial process only in its infancy — cease to be about them and become primarily about us?
It's not so difficult to grasp, how the phenomenon of homegrown terrorism has arisen, whether in Canada or Britain or any other democratic society that allows — because it must be allowed; there's no acceptable alternative — the free flow of ideas, the expression of hateful opinions.
An open society is a safe haven for imported bitterness and cosseted otherness, increasingly so among "micro-actors" operating in small, autonomous groups, with only the most cursive ideological alliance to the likes of Al Qaeda, if "inspired" by it.
Vile principles take hold, a certain kind of retributive megalomania, particularly in impressionable minds. And thus is nurtured the view that they are entitled to strike back, as destructively as possible.
In the United Kingdom, as the public discovered recently — following the release of a report on last July's transit system bombings — intelligence agencies prevented three subsequent terrorist attacks.
Last month, a video circulating on the Internet called upon Muslims to attack targets in Denmark, Norway and France, because of the decision taken by some media in those countries to publish offensive images of the Prophet Muhammad.
Historically, there has been hardly any identifiable group that hasn't believed itself ethnically or religiously or politically targeted for what it is.
But modern global jihad is a different animal. It is tearing the world apart. It is picking the fight. It is devouring its own adherents.
It's killing us.
If not in this alleged plot, in Toronto, then by another misbegotten cabal, on another ordinary day, and you know who'll be blamed.
Damn! You really think so?
They had best worry about a lot more than "backlash".....
Semper Fi
See #15,,,,Hell of an article....
Yup, that's right dickwads.
Your boys just painted a big bullseye on the Canadian Muzzie
community (like there wasn't one there already). So y'all better hope
no member of your community ever is successful in an attack on our soil
or you'll find a much different reaction here than was the case in the USA..
*********************************AN EXCERPT ********************************
From an unmarried computer programmer to a university health sciences graduate and the unemployed, the 17 suspects charged in a foiled terrorist plot represent a “broad strata” of Canadian society.
“Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed,” RCMP assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell said Saturday.
Family members wept as the 17 accused, five of whom were youths at the time of the alleged crimes and cannot be named, were brought into a Brampton courtroom in small groups, handcuffed and shackled at the feet.
One woman broke down, saying her son was yet to appear but that she was upset at the sight of his friends in custody.
Most of the group, who were remanded into custody until their next court appearance on Tuesday, wore street clothes although some appeared in white jump suits.
The majority sported the traditional Muslim male beard.
Alvin Chand, brother of Toronto suspect Steven Vikash Chand, scoffed at the charges outside the courthouse.
“He's not a terrorist, come on, he's a Canadian citizen” Mr. Chand said of his brother. “The people that were arrested are good people. They go to the mosque. They go to school, go to college.”
Aly Hindy, an imam at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in nearby Scarborough, said the centre's mosque had been monitored by security agencies for years. He said Muslims were once again being falsely accused.
“It's not terrorism. It could be some criminal activity with a few guys, that's all,” said Mr. Hindy.
“We are the ones always accused.”
"Rocco Galati, a lawyer for two of the men from Mississauga, said: "Both of their families are very well-established professionals, well-established families, no criminal pasts whatsoever."
Yes, just like the Columbine killers in Colorado.
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