http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=5384e1c0-69b8-44c3-82
e9-c6e28fefa2da
Two attacks plotted
Suspects allegedly planned truck bomb, shooting at crowd
Stewart Bell and Adrian Humphreys
CanWest News Service
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
TORONTO -- The young men charged with plotting terrorist attacks against
Canadian targets were allegedly planning two separate strikes -- one to
detonate a truck bomb to destroy a significant building and the other to
open fire on a crowd in a public place, the National Post has learned.
The alleged conspirators were concentrating their efforts on their assigned
missions and were in an advanced state of planning when authorities arrested
them last weekend.
The national security component of the huge investigation was code-named
Operation Claymore by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's
spy agency, which was on specific alert as its office at the base of the CN
Tower was among the list of prime targets by the alleged conspirators.
The Toronto Stock Exchange was another of the plotters' prime targets for a
massive bomb attack, according to law enforcement sources.
Both attacks would have devastated Toronto and, if carried out during
business hours, would have resulted in significant casualties.
Sources also told the National Post that the commandos of Joint Task
Force-2, Canada's elite special forces unit, were put on standby a short
flight away from where suspected terrorists were conducting "training camps"
at an isolated site north of Toronto.
Police arrested 12 adults and five youths Friday under the federal
Anti-terrorism Act for allegedly plotting to bomb targets in southern
Ontario. Fifteen of them are to appear in a Brampton, Ont., court today for
a bail hearing on a variety of offences.
Of the 17 people charged, five are considered juveniles by the court and
little information on the youths is publicly available regarding their
charges. Of the adults, however, court documents suggest that a sub-group of
six was allegedly involved in the bomb plot. Nine of them are charged with
training to carry out a terrorist activity.
A smaller group of four are charged with training or recruiting others into
a terrorist plot and three are charged with obtaining firearms.
All are charged with participating or contributing to a terrorist group.
The two men, identified by the National Post as the alleged terrorist
leaders -- Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara -- face the most charges. Ahmad is
charged with all six of the terrorism charges.
Ahmad and Amara are joined in being charged with the bomb plot by Asad
Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleem, Qayyum Abdul Jamal and Saad Khalid.
Ahmad is also charged with being with Mohammed Dirie and Yasim Abdi Mohamed
when they were arrested for gun smuggling at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie,
Ont., last Aug. 13.
Charged alongside Ahmad and Amara with recruiting or providing training to
someone to participate in carrying out a terrorist activity are Amin Mohamed
Durrani and Steven Vikash Chand, also known as Abdul Shakur, who converted
to Islam from Hinduism.
Lawyers for a number of the accused men complained that the clients' family
members were not allowed to see their relatives since their arrest.
"My clients are being denied visits from their family. The family members
are being denied access to them. I expected I will be able to get access to
my clients after (Tuesday's) appearance," said Anser Farooq, a lawyer for at
least three of the accused men.
Police seized firearms, computer hard drives, camouflage clothing, an
electronic detonator and three tonnes of ammonium nitrate during the raids.
The RCMP, which had been monitoring the group, switched a load of fertilizer
-- which the conspirators allegedly believed to be 34-0-0 grade fertilizer,
the best for making explosives -- with a benign substance before it was
delivered to the suspects.
After the controlled delivery, heavily armed police fanned out throughout
the Greater Toronto Area to arrest their targets.
Ahmad and Amara had been followers of Jamal, a senior member of the
Ar-Rahman Islamic Centre in Mississauga. Six other of the accused also
attended the Ar-Rahman centre. The facility, in a strip mall in Mississauga,
was the focus of intense international media attention Monday.
Meanwhile, the National Post located an isolated rural property just outside
the Ontario town of Washago, 90 minutes north of Toronto, that neighbours
said was used as a training ground by the suspects.
Residents reported seeing up to a dozen men dressed in camouflage coming and
going from the densely wooded acreage and hearing automatic gunfire from the
property last December and January. Police had the entire area under
surveillance, sources said.
In a 15-minute telephone conversation Monday, U.S. President George W. Bush
expressed his appreciation for Canada's efforts to Prime Minister Stephen
Harper.
Liberal Leader Bill Graham, meanwhile, said Canada must continue its
military role in Afghanistan or risk more terrorist threats at home.
Canada's troops are in Afghanistan precisely to bring peace to that country,
he said, and "we hope well succeed in that engagement, which is so important
for Canada and the international community."
"I'm afraid that if we don't succeed, the threats will get bigger. The
success of our forces in Afghanistan are more and more important, as shown
by what we happened this weekend."
(NATIONAL POST)
C The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2006
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