Post by tizreporter on Jun 5, 2006 8:22:54 GMT -5
Plot began in chat room
CSIS monitored discussions on bombing targets
'Training camp' visit turning point for investigators
Jun. 5, 2006. 05:21 AM
NICOLAAS VAN RIJN
STAFF REPORTER
For most Canadians, ammonium nitrate — even after it was used to destroy the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, including dozens of kids in a daycare centre —is nothing much more than a commonly used plant fertilizer.
Farmers buy and use it by the tonne, mixing it into the soil to ensure a bountiful crop.
But mix ammonium nitrate with the inflammatory rhetoric of an Internet chat room, and it instantly acquires the potential to become something entirely different, needing only the addition of a little fuel oil to turn it into a lethal bomb.
So when a shadowy group of disaffected urban youth began talking in an Internet chat room in the fall of 2004 espousing anti-Western views, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was listening.
The spy agency, and an alphabet soup of other security agencies across the continent, closely monitor such sites, where talk may sometimes turn to buildings and bombs and bringing global jihad home to North America, to Canada.
Often it's just that — talk — but when CSIS began monitoring the sites allegedly used by some of the 17 men and youths arrested on terrorism-related charges in a sweeping series of raids across the GTA Friday evening, the Canadian spy agency heard enough to remain interested, and increased surveillance of the group.
While CSIS and police typically won't talk about their operational methods, the available techniques range from monitoring electronic communications, from cell phones and landlines to emails and computers, to physically following persons of interest as they move about and talk to others.
Four months after the surveillance began, two Americans, from the Atlanta, Ga., area, popped onto the radar.
Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee had been communicating by email with the Canadian group, investigators allege, and in March 2005 the two hopped on a Greyhound bus, paying $280 (U.S.) for two round-trip tickets to Toronto, where, according to U.S. court documents, they were to meet with "like-minded Islamists."
"According to Ahmed ... they met regularly with at least three subjects of an FBI international terrorism investigation," the court documents allege, and discussed "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike."
By now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was involved, and also monitoring members of the Canadian group. The federal police service was brought into the case Nov. 17, 2004, by CSIS agents who believed they had enough information to warrant a criminal investigation.
According to the Los Angeles Times, U.S. authorities were also watching the two Americans, and at some point discovered communications between the men in Canada and Atlanta and other suspected terrorists overseas, including a group arrested in London last fall that counted among its members a computer specialist who used the Arabic word irhabi — for terrorist — as his Internet handle, Irhabi007.
Talk in the group was wide-ranging, according to an American law enforcement official, "about a whole range of targets." Officials and U.S. court documents allege group members were scouting targets that included Canadian government buildings, American oil refineries, and a U.S. tower that they believed controlled global positioning systems used in aviation.
Federal prosecutors in New York also told a recent hearing Sadequee and Ahmed had visited Washington and videotaped the U.S. Capitol, the World Bank headquarters and some fuel storage facilities.
They were charged in March and April and are awaiting trial.
Ahmed, a Pakistani native who has pleaded not guilty, arrived in the U.S. with his family when he was about 12 and is now an American citizen; Sadequee, whose family came from Bangladesh, was born in Virginia; he has been denied bail and is awaiting trial.
In August, 2005, Canadian investigators were watching closely as a car tried to cross back into Canada across the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie. Pulled over by a student working with the Canadian Border Services Agency, the car was rented by Fahim Ahmad, 22 — arrested as part of Friday's sweep — for two others, 24-year-old Yasin Abdi Mohamed of Toronto and Ali Dirie, 22, last of Markham.
Mohamed was found with a loaded handgun tucked in his waistband; Dirie had two pistols taped to his inner thighs; both are now serving two-year sentences.
No charges were laid against Ahmad for making the vehicle available. Not then.
By last winter federal investigators were becoming increasingly concerned about the Canadian group, stressing that it shouldn't be underestimated. Among the things that set alarm bells ringing was an alleged visit to a northern Ontario "training camp" by group members; what they did there or how long they stayed hasn't been revealed.
But investigators allege some of the group's members made a video showing them imitating military manoeuvres. And, police say, the suspects had allegedly acquired guns.
By February, intelligence analysts saw the group as the country's greatest terrorism threat, and called an unusual high-level briefing for chiefs of Ontario's police forces, including Toronto police Chief Bill Blair.
Not long after that investigators brought Toronto Mayor David Miller into the loop, alerting him to a terror investigation that might include a Toronto building as its target.
Although no one is saying so officially, the CSIS headquarters, on Front St. in the shadow of the CN Tower, was among the possible targets — but not, officials stressed during a news conference Saturday, the TTC.
The lengthy investigation took on added urgency this month when talk in the group allegedly turned to acquiring three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, enough to build several powerful bombs.
The rental truck used by Timothy McVeigh to destroy the eight-storey Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was loaded with only a third of that amount; his victims included 168 dead and more than 800 wounded.
Like the CSIS building, the Murrah complex was filled with law enforcement offices.
By the end of last week, investigators felt they had enough evidence to move in on the group.
Although police haven't officially said so, sources have told the Star's Michelle Shephard that the final act in the multi-year investigation came when federal agents intercepted the group's order for the fertilizer, and arranged to have it delivered by truck.
But, the Star has learned, police switched the fertilizer with a harmless powder before making the delivery.
After the deal was done, the handcuffs came out.
At around the same time an elite team led by the RCMP's anti-terrorism task force, comprising federal agents and police officers from forces including Toronto, York, Durham and Peel, began swooping down on locations in Mississauga and Toronto.
Heavily armed officers and armoured vehicles were used in the raids, and police say they met with no resistance in arresting 12 adult males and five juveniles. Most were processed that night at a heavily-guarded Durham police station in Pickering, and appeared in Brampton court the next morning, also under heavy security.
On Saturday, at a 10 a.m. news conference, investigators began revealing some of what they know.
Chiefs of the Toronto, Peel, York and Durham police forces, and representatives from the OPP and CSIS, flanked RCMP Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell as he outlined what police say were their plans for the fertilizer.
"It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," McDonell said. "If I can put this in context for you, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was completed with only one tonne of ammonium nitrate.
"This group posed a real and serious threat," McDonell emphasized. "It had the capacity and intent to carry out these acts."
Behind him, a tabletop held evidence from the Friday evening raids, including a 9-mm Luger pistol, military fatigues, a grab-bag of items ranging from two-way radios, knives and flashlights to duct tape, and a sample bag of ammonium nitrate.
Six of the accused adults are from Mississauga, four from Toronto and two are serving time in a Kingston prison on gun-smuggling charges. Most of the men are in their 20s, although one is 30, another 43.
Police have said they will not discuss the five juveniles arrested during the sweep.
Charges against the men — who return to Brampton court Tuesday — include participating in or contributing to the activity of a terrorist group, including training and recruitment; providing or making available property for terrorist purposes; and the commission of indictable offences including firearms and explosives offences for the benefit of or in association with a terrorist group.
This marks only the second time that such charges have been laid since the Criminal Code was amended in 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to include terrorism offences.
It's also the first time police have made arrests to stop what they allege was an imminent terror attack on Canadian soil.
For neighbours of the 10 men and five juveniles who appeared in Brampton court Saturday — Yasin Abdi Mohamed and Ali Dirie, in prison in Kingston, did not appear — the arrests and charges came mostly as a shock.
They talked of quiet men, religious men, who played basketball and went to school and looked for jobs, of an elder who mentored younger men, but mostly, of men who kept to themselves, coming and going silently to and from their homes in Mississauga and Toronto.
"They never spoke to anyone," said one neighbour.
One youngster talked of the older brother, 19, who'd often disappear, for weeks at a time, without telling anyone where he was going.
"I heard he was going to some camp," the younger brother said. "But I don't know anything about it."
But eventually the older brother and his friends would reappear, the boy recalled, usually with a gift.
"They brought me a lot of stuff, like army suits and caps," the boy said. "Sometimes, he'll go get pizza."
www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Ar
ticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1149460818073&call_pageid=968332188492&col=9687
93972154&t=TS_Home
TIZ
CSIS monitored discussions on bombing targets
'Training camp' visit turning point for investigators
Jun. 5, 2006. 05:21 AM
NICOLAAS VAN RIJN
STAFF REPORTER
For most Canadians, ammonium nitrate — even after it was used to destroy the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, including dozens of kids in a daycare centre —is nothing much more than a commonly used plant fertilizer.
Farmers buy and use it by the tonne, mixing it into the soil to ensure a bountiful crop.
But mix ammonium nitrate with the inflammatory rhetoric of an Internet chat room, and it instantly acquires the potential to become something entirely different, needing only the addition of a little fuel oil to turn it into a lethal bomb.
So when a shadowy group of disaffected urban youth began talking in an Internet chat room in the fall of 2004 espousing anti-Western views, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was listening.
The spy agency, and an alphabet soup of other security agencies across the continent, closely monitor such sites, where talk may sometimes turn to buildings and bombs and bringing global jihad home to North America, to Canada.
Often it's just that — talk — but when CSIS began monitoring the sites allegedly used by some of the 17 men and youths arrested on terrorism-related charges in a sweeping series of raids across the GTA Friday evening, the Canadian spy agency heard enough to remain interested, and increased surveillance of the group.
While CSIS and police typically won't talk about their operational methods, the available techniques range from monitoring electronic communications, from cell phones and landlines to emails and computers, to physically following persons of interest as they move about and talk to others.
Four months after the surveillance began, two Americans, from the Atlanta, Ga., area, popped onto the radar.
Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee had been communicating by email with the Canadian group, investigators allege, and in March 2005 the two hopped on a Greyhound bus, paying $280 (U.S.) for two round-trip tickets to Toronto, where, according to U.S. court documents, they were to meet with "like-minded Islamists."
"According to Ahmed ... they met regularly with at least three subjects of an FBI international terrorism investigation," the court documents allege, and discussed "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike."
By now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was involved, and also monitoring members of the Canadian group. The federal police service was brought into the case Nov. 17, 2004, by CSIS agents who believed they had enough information to warrant a criminal investigation.
According to the Los Angeles Times, U.S. authorities were also watching the two Americans, and at some point discovered communications between the men in Canada and Atlanta and other suspected terrorists overseas, including a group arrested in London last fall that counted among its members a computer specialist who used the Arabic word irhabi — for terrorist — as his Internet handle, Irhabi007.
Talk in the group was wide-ranging, according to an American law enforcement official, "about a whole range of targets." Officials and U.S. court documents allege group members were scouting targets that included Canadian government buildings, American oil refineries, and a U.S. tower that they believed controlled global positioning systems used in aviation.
Federal prosecutors in New York also told a recent hearing Sadequee and Ahmed had visited Washington and videotaped the U.S. Capitol, the World Bank headquarters and some fuel storage facilities.
They were charged in March and April and are awaiting trial.
Ahmed, a Pakistani native who has pleaded not guilty, arrived in the U.S. with his family when he was about 12 and is now an American citizen; Sadequee, whose family came from Bangladesh, was born in Virginia; he has been denied bail and is awaiting trial.
In August, 2005, Canadian investigators were watching closely as a car tried to cross back into Canada across the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie. Pulled over by a student working with the Canadian Border Services Agency, the car was rented by Fahim Ahmad, 22 — arrested as part of Friday's sweep — for two others, 24-year-old Yasin Abdi Mohamed of Toronto and Ali Dirie, 22, last of Markham.
Mohamed was found with a loaded handgun tucked in his waistband; Dirie had two pistols taped to his inner thighs; both are now serving two-year sentences.
No charges were laid against Ahmad for making the vehicle available. Not then.
By last winter federal investigators were becoming increasingly concerned about the Canadian group, stressing that it shouldn't be underestimated. Among the things that set alarm bells ringing was an alleged visit to a northern Ontario "training camp" by group members; what they did there or how long they stayed hasn't been revealed.
But investigators allege some of the group's members made a video showing them imitating military manoeuvres. And, police say, the suspects had allegedly acquired guns.
By February, intelligence analysts saw the group as the country's greatest terrorism threat, and called an unusual high-level briefing for chiefs of Ontario's police forces, including Toronto police Chief Bill Blair.
Not long after that investigators brought Toronto Mayor David Miller into the loop, alerting him to a terror investigation that might include a Toronto building as its target.
Although no one is saying so officially, the CSIS headquarters, on Front St. in the shadow of the CN Tower, was among the possible targets — but not, officials stressed during a news conference Saturday, the TTC.
The lengthy investigation took on added urgency this month when talk in the group allegedly turned to acquiring three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, enough to build several powerful bombs.
The rental truck used by Timothy McVeigh to destroy the eight-storey Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was loaded with only a third of that amount; his victims included 168 dead and more than 800 wounded.
Like the CSIS building, the Murrah complex was filled with law enforcement offices.
By the end of last week, investigators felt they had enough evidence to move in on the group.
Although police haven't officially said so, sources have told the Star's Michelle Shephard that the final act in the multi-year investigation came when federal agents intercepted the group's order for the fertilizer, and arranged to have it delivered by truck.
But, the Star has learned, police switched the fertilizer with a harmless powder before making the delivery.
After the deal was done, the handcuffs came out.
At around the same time an elite team led by the RCMP's anti-terrorism task force, comprising federal agents and police officers from forces including Toronto, York, Durham and Peel, began swooping down on locations in Mississauga and Toronto.
Heavily armed officers and armoured vehicles were used in the raids, and police say they met with no resistance in arresting 12 adult males and five juveniles. Most were processed that night at a heavily-guarded Durham police station in Pickering, and appeared in Brampton court the next morning, also under heavy security.
On Saturday, at a 10 a.m. news conference, investigators began revealing some of what they know.
Chiefs of the Toronto, Peel, York and Durham police forces, and representatives from the OPP and CSIS, flanked RCMP Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell as he outlined what police say were their plans for the fertilizer.
"It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," McDonell said. "If I can put this in context for you, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was completed with only one tonne of ammonium nitrate.
"This group posed a real and serious threat," McDonell emphasized. "It had the capacity and intent to carry out these acts."
Behind him, a tabletop held evidence from the Friday evening raids, including a 9-mm Luger pistol, military fatigues, a grab-bag of items ranging from two-way radios, knives and flashlights to duct tape, and a sample bag of ammonium nitrate.
Six of the accused adults are from Mississauga, four from Toronto and two are serving time in a Kingston prison on gun-smuggling charges. Most of the men are in their 20s, although one is 30, another 43.
Police have said they will not discuss the five juveniles arrested during the sweep.
Charges against the men — who return to Brampton court Tuesday — include participating in or contributing to the activity of a terrorist group, including training and recruitment; providing or making available property for terrorist purposes; and the commission of indictable offences including firearms and explosives offences for the benefit of or in association with a terrorist group.
This marks only the second time that such charges have been laid since the Criminal Code was amended in 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to include terrorism offences.
It's also the first time police have made arrests to stop what they allege was an imminent terror attack on Canadian soil.
For neighbours of the 10 men and five juveniles who appeared in Brampton court Saturday — Yasin Abdi Mohamed and Ali Dirie, in prison in Kingston, did not appear — the arrests and charges came mostly as a shock.
They talked of quiet men, religious men, who played basketball and went to school and looked for jobs, of an elder who mentored younger men, but mostly, of men who kept to themselves, coming and going silently to and from their homes in Mississauga and Toronto.
"They never spoke to anyone," said one neighbour.
One youngster talked of the older brother, 19, who'd often disappear, for weeks at a time, without telling anyone where he was going.
"I heard he was going to some camp," the younger brother said. "But I don't know anything about it."
But eventually the older brother and his friends would reappear, the boy recalled, usually with a gift.
"They brought me a lot of stuff, like army suits and caps," the boy said. "Sometimes, he'll go get pizza."
www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Ar
ticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1149460818073&call_pageid=968332188492&col=9687
93972154&t=TS_Home
TIZ