I wonder if they used .........the NSA's huge phone database ..............???? .........*L*

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1149285034044&call_pageid=976163513378&col=969048863474

How Internet Monitoring Sparked A CSIS Probe

By: MICHELLE SHEPHARD, STAFF REPORTER
Jun. 3, 2006.

Last night's dramatic police raid and arrest of as many as a dozen men — with more to come — marks the culmination of Canada's largest ever terrorism investigation into an alleged homegrown cell.

The chain of events began two years ago, sparked by local teenagers roving through Internet sites, reading and espousing anti-Western sentiments and vowing to attack at home, in the name of oppressed Muslims here and abroad.

Their words were sometimes encrypted, the Internet sites where they communicated allegedly restricted by passwords, but Canadian spies back in 2004 were reading them. And as the youths' words turned into actions, they began watching them.

According to sources close to the investigation, the suspects are teenagers and men in their 20s who had a relatively typical Canadian upbringing, but — allegedly spurred on by images of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and angered by what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims at home — became increasingly violent.

Police say they acquired weapons, picked targets and made detailed plans.

They travelled north to a "training camp" and made propaganda videos imitating jihadists who had battled in Afghanistan. At night, they washed up at a Tim Hortons nearby.

One was a math and chemistry whiz from Scarborough who grew up to become a 22-year-old husband and father.

It's unclear why the authorities decided to act on their suspicions yesterday. None of these allegations has been proven in court, where the suspects are expected to appear for the first time this morning.

Sources say the arrests involve a "homegrown" terrorism cell — Western youths who have never set foot in Afghanistan but allegedly were radicalized here, and who are thought to be potentially as dangerous as the cells that once took orders from Osama bin Laden. Western governments, including Canada's, have repeatedly warned of this phenomenon and blamed recent attacks, such as last July's bombings in London, as the work of such groups.

The Canadian investigation involves a complicated web of connections, with alleged ties to two men from Georgia who came to Toronto in March 2005 to meet with "like-minded Islamic extremists," according to U.S. court documents.

Details of the Canadian investigation will be officially released this morning at a news conference.

For the spies who work on the 10th floor of a Front St. office building, with the CN Tower looming above and a hub of Toronto's tourist district buzzing below, this investigation was personal.

The group arrested yesterday allegedly had a list of targets, sources have told the Star, and the Toronto headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was one of them.

So were the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa and a smattering of other high-profile, heavily populated areas. But since most of the suspects lived in the GTA, it was the potential threat to the spy service's office and the chaos an attack would create in the heart of Toronto that concerned CSIS most.

According to sources, the suspects allegedly planned to target the spy service because many of them had encountered agents early in the investigation, when they were interviewed and put under surveillance. They also were allegedly angered by media reports accusing CSIS of racial profiling of Muslims.

Many of the agents were known to members of the group only by aliases, but the belief that the office had been targeted led to months of unease among CSIS staff, sources said.

Some of the group's members had even been spotted taking notes around the building, and at least one had reportedly visited the basement, one source told the Star.


Slim

I guess the investigation was promulgated on information derived from at least 7 different countries. This is chilling and gives good insight into the nature of our terrorist enemies.

http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=de3f8e90-982a-47af-8e5e-a1366fd5d6cc


Alleged Canadian Terror Plot Has Worldwide Links


By: Stewart Bell and Kelly Patrick, CanWest News Service
Published: Sunday, June 04, 2006

TORONTO - A Canadian counter-terrorism investigation that led to the arrests of 17 people accused of plotting bombings in Ontario is linked to probes in a half-dozen countries, the National Post has learned.

Well before police tactical teams began their sweeps around Toronto on Friday, at least 18 related arrests had already taken place in Canada, the United States, Britain, Bosnia, Denmark, Sweden, and Bangladesh.

The six-month RCMP investigation, called Project OSage, is one of several overlapping probes that include an FBI case called Operation Northern Exposure and a British probe known as Operation Mazhar.

At a news conference Saturday, the RCMP announced terrorism-related charges had been laid against a dozen Toronto-area men and five teens under the age of 18.
The group “took steps to acquire components necessary to create explosive devices” including three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, commonly used in terrorist bombs, police said.

By comparison, the truck bomb used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, contained a single tonne of ammonium nitrate.

“It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack,” RCMP assistant commissioner Mike McDonell said.

“This group posed a real threat. It had the capacity and intent to carry out these attacks.”

Police declined to identify the intended targets because the investigation is ongoing but said they were all in southern Ontario and did not include the Toronto transit system, as some media outlets had reported.

As senior RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials spoke to reporters, some of the evidence seized during police raids was displayed on a table guarded by police officers.

The materials included a bag of ammonium nitrate, a handgun and ammunition clip, computer hard drive, and what appeared to be a cellphone activated electronic detonator hidden inside a small black fishing tackle box.

Police also displayed bags of camouflage clothing and boots apparently seized from a camp north of Toronto that some of the members of the group had allegedly used for combat training.

In a speech to new Canadian Forces recruits and their families Saturday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canadians can’t escape a dangerous world by turning a blind eye to it.

“As we have said on many occasions, Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism,” he said.

“Through the work and co-operation of the RCMP, CSIS, local law enforcement and Toronto’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET), acts of violence by extremist groups may have been prevented.”

The Ontario accused made brief court appearances in Brampton, north of Toronto, on Saturday. They face charges of participating in the acts of a terrorist group, including training and recruitment; firearms and explosives offences for the purposes of terrorism and providing property for terrorist purposes.

With the exception of two men, who are aged 43 and 30, the alleged terrorists are all in their teens and early 20s.

They include men of Somali, Egyptian, Jamaican, and Trinidadian origin. All are residents of Canada and “for the most part” all are Canadian citizens, police said.
Charged are: Fahim Ahmad, 21, Zakaria Amara, 20, Asad Ansari, 21, Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mohammed Dirie, 22, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Jahmaal James, 23, Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Steven Vikash Chand, 25, and Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21. A twelfth man was a youth when some of the alleged offences took place and can’t be named, along with the other five youths arrested.

“For various reasons, they appear to have become adherents to a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaida,” said Luc Portelance, the CSIS assistant director of operations.

“Any movement that has the ability to turn people against their fellow citizens is obviously something that CSIS is very concerned about.”

He called the investigation the largest since the Anti-terrorism Act was passed by Parliament in December 2001, in response to the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

“It is important to know that this operation in no way reflects negatively on any specific community, or ethno-cultural group in Canada,” he added.

“Terrorism is a dangerous ideology and a global phenomenon, as yesterday’s arrests demonstrate, Canada is not immune from this ideology.”
CSIS and RCMP officials invited about a dozen members of Toronto’s Muslim community to a meeting Saturday morning to discuss potential fallout.

“The police said they are cognizant of the fact that there could be a backlash and that they’ve taken all precautions to ensure that nothing like this happens,” Canadian Muslim Congress spokesman Tarek Fatah said Saturday.

“They are very conscious of the fact that this is a small group of criminals and they don’t reflect the vast Muslim community in Toronto.”

While Fatah couldn’t discount the possibility that “nut bars” might retaliate against innocent Muslims, he thought it unlikely.

Despite recent warnings that Canadian-bred terrorists were operating in the country, Fatah said he was still surprised authorities had uncovered a plot in Toronto.
“I’m shocked that it’s so close to home,” he said. “But I’m quite happy that the RCMP was able to stop this terrorist attempt, if the allegations are true. It’s quite scary that someone would live in Toronto and would like to blow up buildings and kill people here.”

The Toronto busts are linked to arrests that began last August at a Canadian border post near Niagara Falls and continued in October in Sarajevo, London and Scandinavia, and earlier this year in New York and Georgia.

The FBI confirmed Saturday the arrests were related to the recent indictments in the U.S. of Ehsanul Sadequee and Syed Ahmed, who are accused of meeting with extremists in Toronto last March to discuss terrorist training and plots.

“There is preliminary indication that some of the Canadian subjects may have had limited contact with the two people recently arrested from Georgia,” Special Agent Richard Kolko, the FBI spokesman, said in an e-mail to the National Post.

The intricate web of connections between Toronto, London, Atlanta, Sarajevo, Dhaka, and elsewhere illustrates the challenge confronting counter-terrorism investigators almost five years after 9/11.

Linking the international probes are online communications, phone calls and in particular videotapes that authorities allege show some of the targets the young extremists considered blowing up.


Slim

I guess this will wipe the smug looks off the faces of Canadians who thought America bashing would be enough to insure their insulation from terrorist attacks.

The threat of radical Islam is directed against the entire non-Islamic world, not just the United States and the fact that so many countries are dragging their feet in the battle against it simply aids the fundamentalist fanatics.

The war against terrorism must be a united effort not just the work of a few nations.

According to sources close to the investigation, the suspects are teenagers and men in their 20s who had a relatively typical Canadian upbringing, but — allegedly spurred on by images of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and angered by what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims at home — became increasingly violent...............

Give it a rest, guerilla.

Those kids were going so enraged at supposed mistreatment of Muslims by the U.S. that they were going to attack CANADA!??

The biggest thing I've learned is that it's more the stupidity of these supposed "terrorists" rather than the skill of Canadian intelligence that got them caught, geez.

angered by what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims at home — became increasingly violent

Why weren't they incensed at the killing of Shia Muslims by Sunni Muslims in Iraq and plan their attacks for there instead? I don't kow of any Muslims who have been blown up in either Canada or the United States.

I guess this will wipe the smug looks off the faces of Canadians who thought America bashing would be enough to insure their insulation from terrorist attacks.

The war against terrorism must be a united effort not just the work of a few nations.


OK as a Canadian, I found your comment quite insulting. Yes Canada is not safe from the threads of War or terrorism, but to say that this will wipe the smug look off their faces is just wrong.
Our prime minister may be not sending all our troop to fight BUSH's power hunger need for war. That doesn't mean Canada isn't in this at all or that we feel safe.

This is just my opinion and is not meant to insult but more a comment of how I feel. I would not trade living in Canada for one minute.

Shortstuff,

Welcome to the boards, dammit.

Our prime minister may be not sending all our troop to fight BUSH's power hunger need for war. That doesn't mean Canada isn't in this at all or that we feel safe.

This war isn't "Bush's" power hungry "need" for war.

First off, this thing in Iraq hasn't done Bush any good at all. The Iraq war has been mired in controversy since the get-go. It IS necessary, though. 9/11 has proven that the Islamists are not about to leave the U.S. alone, or the West for that matter. Either the U.S. starts making inroads into the Middle East or the Middle East keeps on being a breeding ground for Islamic Jihad. Not an easy decision, not something that is going to be ended any time soon and it sure as hell isn't a decision that is going to pacify the screwball Left, dammit.

As far as safety is concerned, I could bet it was the BIGGEST surprise you guys in Canada have had in quite a while. Get used to it, Islamic Jihad is about making war on Western Culture and Civilization and those guys will take any target of oppurtunity, dammit.

1. .....BUSH's power hunger need for war.....That doesn't mean Canada isn't in this at all or that we feel safe.

2. I would not trade living in Canada for one minute.
1. So which is it. If this war is just about "power hunger" then why don't you feel safe.

2. I visited Canada last Summer. It's beautiful and very few people were fat.

First off, this thing in Iraq hasn't done Bush any good at all. The Iraq war has been mired in controversy since the get-go. It IS necessary, though. 9/11 has proven that the Islamists are not about to leave the U.S. alone, or the West for that matter. Either the U.S. starts making inroads into the Middle East or the Middle East keeps on being a breeding ground for Islamic Jihad. Not an easy decision, not something that is going to be ended any time soon and it sure as hell isn't a decision that is going to pacify the screwball Left, dammit. Dumdest. Arguement. Ever.

"Well all these bees stung me and all I did was shove a stick in their hive. I think that if we shove enough sticks, in enough bee hives that they will eventually stop stinging us.

Thats waayyy easier then not putting sticks in their hives in the first place..."

Oh and I love how you imply that BushCo had no choice but to instigate mass murder while the Muslims just choose to do it all the time...

Heres a blog with updates on all stories related to the case. Right now it seems like a complete BS set-up. Seems like there may have been one crazy and the rest just got swept up in the net.

http://www.yayacanada.com/toronto_terrorist_arrests_03-06-06.html

And the huge show the popo were putting on during the trial (snipers etc) seems like they don't have shit for a case.

overweightgorilla said ......"Well all these bees stung me and all I did was shove a stick in their hive. I think that if we shove enough sticks, in enough bee hives that they will eventually stop stinging us.".

Selective Memory .....is a terrible thing to waste .....*L*


Slim

Thats waayyy easier then not putting sticks in their hives in the first place..."
That's how the prior administration spent the 90's (even AFTER being stung). That sure did a lot of good.