In one of the biggest antiterrorism operations in North America since the September 11 terrorist attacks, 17 Canadian residents were arrested and charged with plotting a series of attacks against targets in southeast Canada.
Twelve men and five minors, most of them Canadian citizens, were arrested on June 2-3, 2006, during a series of coordinated raids in several locations around Toronto. The suspects were taken into custody in connection with an alleged plot to use truck bombs against targets in southern Ontario, including power plants, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the downtown Toronto office of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
The alleged plot also including a plan to storm the Parliament building in Ottawa, take hostages and behead the prime minister if the government did not pull its 2,300 troops out of Afghanistan and release Muslim political prisoners, according to court documents.
While charges against the five minors have not been made public yet, each of the adults is charged with one count of participating in a terrorist group. Three suspects are charged with importing weapons and ammunition for the purpose of terrorist activity and nine face charges of receiving training from a terrorist group. In addition, four are charged with providing training and six are charged with intending to cause an explosion that could cause serious bodily harm or death.
With the exception of two men aged 43 and 30, the suspects are all in their teens and early 20s. They include men of Somali, Egyptian, Jamaican, and Trinidadian origin.
Police and intelligence officials, who had been monitoring the group for some time, said they decided to carry out the raids after the group arranged a delivery of three tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be made into an explosive when combined with fuel oil. The suspects also operated training camps, according to authorities, although they would not disclose their locations. At a news conference, police displayed items they said were used at the camps, including a pistol, a computer hard drive, military fatigues, army-style boots and two-way radios.
Several of the suspects reportedly attended Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, a storefront mosque in Mississauga, just west of Toronto. A director of the Islamic Center, said Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, “was very active associating with the young fellows” and was “teaching them intolerance.”
One of the suspects, Zakaria Amara, 20, apparently led the effort to buy the ammonium nitrate for truck bombs via the Internet. Investigators found a remote triggering device that at his home in Mississauga, according to court documents. Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, who reportedly helped collect the bomb-making materials, allegedly paid an undercover police officer $1,796 as a down payment for the chemicals, according to the documents.
Another suspect, Steven Vikash Chand (a.k.a. Abdul Shakur), 25, was a member of the Royal Regiment of Canada, a reservist unit that meets in Toronto, between 2000 and 2004. A military spokeswoman said Chand “spent a large portion of his time on leave of absence.”
At the time of the raids, two of the suspects, Mohammed Dirie, 22, and Yasin Abdi Mohamed, 24, were in a Kingston penitentiary, each serving a two-year sentence. They were stopped last August at Fort Erie’s Peace Bridge by the Canada Border Security Agency after their rental car was pulled over and searched. Two loaded guns were found strapped to Dirie’s thighs. Another suspect, Fahim Ahmad, 21, who faces the most charges in the terror plot, apparently rented the car for Dirie and Mohamad at that time.
Some of the Canadian suspects may have had limited contact with two Georgia men recently arrested on terrorism charges and accused of meeting with extremists in Toronto to discuss terrorist training and plots, according to FBI spokesman Richard Kolko.
Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, was arrested on March 23 for allegedly providing material support of terrorism. Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 19, was arrested on April 17, 2006, in Bangladesh and then was handed over to the FBI and put on a plane to New York, where he was charged with lying to federal officials. The U.S. Justice Department said the two suspects had traveled to Canada on March 13, 2005, to meet with the Canadian suspects. They met with “three subjects of an FBI international terrorism investigation,” according to an FBI affidavit, to discuss “strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike, to include oil refineries and military bases.”
While there is no evidence of direct ties to Al Qaeda or its leadership, the suspects apparently adhere to a “violent ideology inspired by Al Qaeda,” according to the assistant director of operations for the CSIS. The suspects appeared to have been drawn to Islamic militancy through the Internet and radical Islamic chat rooms.
There has already been some indication that the Canadian suspects, as well as the two Georgia men, may have been in touch with Younis Tsouli, a 22-year-old British national arrested near London in October 2005 for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack. Using the cyber alter-ego Irhabi007, Tsouli was able to distribute various jihadist materials through the Internet for almost three years.
Police seized a computer hard drive belonging to Tsouli, who has already been linked to arrests in Bosnia, Denmark, England and Sweden, containing pictures of several locations in Washington D.C., according to Scotland Yard. Tsouli is also charged with possessing computerized slides demonstrating how to make a car bomb and a DVD explaining how to create a suicide bomber belt.
