The RCMP is investigating seven suspected terrorist plots so disturbing they "keep me awake at night," the senior Mountie for national security disclosed yesterday.
Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell said the cases are "spread right across the country" and each is comparable in scale to Canada's biggest alleged jihadist conspiracy, which resulted in the arrests of 18 Toronto-area people in a suspected plot to bomb federal buildings in 2006. The seven cases are among an unprecedented 848 national security cases, most related to terrorism, currently under investigation, Assistant Commissioner McDonell told an Ottawa conference on critical infrastructure protection.
"What we're onto scares us," he said in a later interview, without elaborating. "What we're not onto really scares us."
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the RCMP's national security criminal investigation section's caseload has grown 780 per cent, with the $40-million-a-year section "borrowing people from here, there and everywhere, there's just that much work out there," he said. "It's a no-risk environment. Our people are running at the limit." His comments are the most detailed and candid yet from police on the threat confronting Canada.
"What we're facing is a violent Islamist born-again social movement," comprised mostly of young, second- or third-generation immigrants with a secular background, he told the Conference Board of Canada gathering of security, industry and government experts.
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An extremist Muslim cleric regarded as Osama bin Laden’s “spiritual ambassador in Europe” must be released on bail, a judge ruled yesterday.
Abu Qatada, 48, who won his legal fight against deportation to Jordan last month, will be freed from prison under strict bail conditions, amounting to 22-hour house arrest, despite being deemed a threat to national security. The cleric applied to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) for bail on the ground that it was inhumane to detain him indefinitely if there was no prospect of his being deported.
The order by Mr Justice Mitting to release him is the latest in a series of judicial decisions that undermine the Government’s stance on terrorism. In the past year, the courts have in effect rewritten sections of terrorism legislation and ruled that financial sanctions on terrorist suspects were absurd and unlawful.
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