The only thing amazing about this development is that it took so long. This world is a lot more dangerous than it was in 2001. A new generation of terrorists are being trained and hidden underground all over the world waiting for their time. The inspiration the Iraqi war provided is sprouting new cells that will mature over the next 10 years and try to cripple the economies of the West. If 9/11 was any predictor, they will do great damage and take many lives.
There has got to be more of these cells, even in the US. Lets just hope they are found. And lets hope they are indeed terrorists and this isn't another example of overzealous counter-terrorism. I am more afraid of the backlash of further loss of privacy and freedoms. Safety isn't worth a loss of liberty.
New York Times
Seventeen Canadian residents were arrested and charged with plotting to attack targets in southern Ontario with crude but powerful fertilizer bombs, the Canadian authorities said Saturday. The arrests represented one of the largest counterterrorism sweeps in North America since the attacks of September 2001. American officials said that the plot did not involve any targets in the United States, but added that the full dimension of the alleged attack was unknown.
At a news conference in Toronto, home to at least six suspects, police and intelligence officials said they had been monitoring the group for some time and moved in to make the arrests on Friday after the group arranged to take delivery of three tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be made into an explosive when combined with fuel oil. "It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," said Mike McDonell, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police assistant commissioner. He said that by comparison the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was carried out "with only one ton of ammonium nitrate."
The 17 men were mainly of South Asian descent and most were in their teens or early 20's. One of the men was 30 years old and the oldest was 43 years old, police officials said. None of them had any known affiliation with Al Qaeda.
[...]The F.B.I. issued a statement on Saturday saying there was a "preliminary indication" that some of the Canadian subjects might have had "limited contact" with two people from Georgia who were recently arrested. Those two were Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 19, an American of Bangladeshi descent, and Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, a Pakistani-born American.
Law-enforcement officials said they had made "casing" videos of various sites in Washington, D.C., and have said that their case was linked to the arrests of several men in Britain last fall, and that the two were believed to have met with "like-minded Islamic extremists " in Canada in March 2005.
A counterterrorism official in the United States said that while there was contact between the Georgia men earlier this year and those arrested in Canada on Friday, there was no evidence that the Georgia suspects were involved in the bombing plot.
[...]Tarek Fatah, the communications director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, a national group, said that Mr. Jamal, the oldest of the suspects, is a well-known and fiery figure in the Toronto area's South Asian community, and that he was the imam of the Ar-Rahman Quran Learning Center, a mosque in a rented industrial building in Mississauga.
[...]Luc Portelance, the assistant director of operations at the Canadian intelligence agency, said the group's members "appear to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by Al Qaeda." The police official, however, said that there was no evidence of links between the two groups.
Alvin Chand, the brother of suspect Steven Vikash Chand, dismissed the police allegations outside the courthouse. "He's not a terrorist, come on, he's a Canadian citizen" Mr. Chand said, The Canadian Press reported. "The people that were arrested are good people. They go to the mosque. They go to school, go to college." MORE
1 comment:
The only part I don't understand is why [someone] would want to bomb Canada. Canada doesn't really get involved in a lot of international conflicts. They are typically friends to all. They wouldn't even commit troops to Iraq.
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