17 accused of plotting to build bombs to set off in southern Ontario

[Dee]

Accused 'inspired by al-Qaeda,' say police (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/cbc/s/04062006/3/canada-accused-inspired-al-qaeda-say-police.html)
Sun Jun 04, 11:50 AM EST
CBC News

The 12 men and five youths accused of plotting to build bombs to set off in southern Ontario were supporters of al-Qaeda, law enforcement officials alleged Saturday.

"For various reasons, they appear to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaeda," said Luc Portelance, Assistant Director of Operations for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

"Any movement that has the ability to turn people against their fellow citizens is obviously something CSIS is very concerned about," said Portelance, although officials stressed there's no direct link between those charged and the militant group.

Led by the RCMP's anti-terrorism task force, more than 400 police officers from across Ontario made the series of arrests Friday night and early Saturday morning.

Of the adults arrested, four are from Toronto, six are from nearby Mississauga, and two are from Kingston in eastern Ontario. The men range in age from 19 to 43.

Most of the suspects are Canadian citizens and all are residents, said police, who added that some are students, some are employed and some are unemployed...

The arrests mark the second time people have been detained under Canada's Anti-terrorism Act.

The first case involves Mohammad Momin Khawaja, an Ottawa-area man charged with participating in the activities of a British terrorist group and facilitating a terrorist activity. He is being held in an Ottawa detention centre, awaiting trial.

[moe75]

Heard about this just by chance when we turned on our B&B complementary satellite TV last night (we have just returned from a short three day vacation). Gave us both a déjà vu, having learned of the twin towers crash while driving home from another short vacation back in September/01.

I'm glad we're trying them in our own courts this time. It baffles me that most (if not all) are Canadian-born. There just happened to be an open house this weekend in Ottawa whereby a lot of businesses/clubs/religious organizations open their doors for a few hours to present their inner workings. Heather and I decided to take in the open doors at the main Mosque in town. I was much gratified to see a lot of people there and the local Muslim association was really very well organized and obviously anticipating a lot of curious and befuddled Canadians. An old man there told my wife that it never hurts to ask questions. It only hurts if you don't ask them he said.

It must be very difficult to be a Muslim in the Western world now. There was a great article in the Times (New York) I think on Thursday of the past week which chronicled the troubles Muslim Americans have had at border crossings. Wish I could find the link for you, but I'm sure it hasn't been archived yet if you're interested. What can we do but read and try and understand the other guy?? Visit our local mosques and ask questions as the old man said.

Here's one befuddled Canadian who's going to try.
:confused:

[Dee]

My apartment building has a mix of many cultures, Moe, Muslim among them. In fact the whole neighbourhood does. I have never felt less safe living here because of that.

I wonder if this is the article you were referring to?

June 1, 2006
Terror Fears Hamper U.S. Muslims' Travel (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/us/nationalspecial3/01traveler.html?ei=5094&en=d03049e974fda6df&hp=&ex=1149220800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print)
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

SAN FRANCISCO, May 31 — Azhar Usman, a burly American-born Muslim with a heavy black beard, says he elicits an almost universal reaction when he boards an airplane at any United States airport: conversations stop in midsentence and the look in the eyes of his fellow passengers says, "We're all going to die!"

For Ahmed Ahmed, a comedian, it is even worse. His double-barreled name matches an occasional alias used by a henchman of Osama bin Laden. "It's a bad time to be named Ahmed right now," he riffs in his stand-up routine, before describing being hauled through the Las Vegas airport in handcuffs.

Taleb Salhab and his wife say they too were dragged away in handcuffs at the border crossing in Port Huron, Mich., as their two preschool daughters wailed in the back seat of their car. The Salhabs were discharged after four hours of questioning, with no explanation from customs officers.

Getting through United States airports and border crossings has grown more difficult for everyone since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But Muslim Americans say they are having a harder time than most, sometimes facing an intimidating maze of barriers, if not outright discrimination. Advocacy groups have taken to labeling their predicament "traveling while Muslim," and accuse the government of ignoring a serious erosion of civil rights. Next month, the American Civil Liberties Union will go back to court to broaden a suit on behalf of Muslims and Arab-Americans who are demanding the United States government come up with a better system for screening travelers.

The delays, humiliation and periodic roughing up have prompted some American Muslims to avoid traveling as much as possible. Some even skip meeting anyone at the airport for fear of a nasty encounter with a law-enforcement officer. Those who do venture forth say they are always nervous.

(more ...)

[moe75]

I wonder if this is the article you were referring to?

June 1, 2006
Terror Fears Hamper U.S. Muslims' Travel (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/us/nationalspecial3/01traveler.html?ei=5094&en=d03049e974fda6df&hp=&ex=1149220800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print)


Yes, that's the one. I've been reading all day, and it just depresses me that this has reached our country. I suppose I was naive, like a lot of Canadians in that way. I fear our politicians and military leaders will take this as a license to continue in their present policy. Our beloved Prime Minister is already aping the rhetoric of Bush/Blair et al. "We'll stay the course" he says. Yeah right. You tell 'em Stephen. Meanwhile our boys get blown to little chunks for nothing as far as I can see.

God help our country.

:( :(

[Dee]

I fear our politicians and military leaders will take this as a license to continue in their present policy. Our beloved Prime Minister is already aping the rhetoric of Bush/Blair et al.

Yes, well, Stephen Harper. I was disgusted when he was voted into office, and would be more than glad to vote him out again.

He's aping Bush and seems too fond of secrecy (http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1143846635451&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795)
Apr. 2, 2006. 01:00 AM
LINDA MCQUAIG

In his election campaign, Stephen Harper played down his radical views, presenting himself as a moderate mostly interested in restoring honest government.

Still, Canadians were aware when they elected Harper — giving him a weak mandate — that he favours tougher crime laws, less generous social policy and more tax cuts.

What they didn't know is that he's also secretive and arrogant. Another thing Canadians might not have known because it didn't come up much in the campaign, is that the Prime Minister is bent on refashioning Canada's role in the world, bringing us closer in line with Washington.

Harper's secrecy is disturbing. We need more transparency and accessibility in government, not less. Yet already Harper is strangely inaccessible to the media, which, for most of the public, offers the only window on government.

Of course, Harper readily uses the media when he wants to publicize his trips abroad.

Yet he's taken the unusual step of refusing to reveal when his cabinet is meeting, thereby shielding himself and his ministers from being questioned by reporters — one of the few opportunities for such questioning.

As for arrogance: Harper's refusal to co-operate with an investigation by ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro, on the grounds that Shapiro was appointed by the Liberals, reveals a tendency to see himself as above accountability.

Opposition critics have noted that this is equivalent to Harper refusing to co-operate with the Auditor-General because she, too, was appointed by the Liberals. Harper apparently regards the rules of Parliament as optional, to be followed only when it suits him.

Then there's foreign policy. Is it just me or does anyone else find it ominous that Harper says "God bless Canada" and vows not to "cut and run" — deliberately aping the most unsavoury president in U.S. history?

The refocusing of Canada's military from peacekeeping to an active warmaking role in the U.S. "war on terror" was set in place by the previous Liberal government, but Harper is embracing this regrettable change with gusto.

(more ...)

[Dee]

Terrorist ideology spreads on the Internet from Bali to Belgium to Brampton (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/05062006/2/national-terrorist-ideology-spreads-internet-bali-belgium-brampton.html)
Mon Jun 05, 05:32 PM EST

By Bruce Cheadle

OTTAWA (CP) - There's no firm evidence of involvement by the al-Qaida network. But at any given moment, there are an estimated 4,500 terrorist-related websites accessible on the Internet.

And the Internet, in recent years, has become "the major hotspot" for the radicalization of homegrown Islamic terrorists.

Three statements from three different Western governments - in Britain, Canada and Belgium - all pointing to one common problem for national security agencies: the global war on terror is a virtual quagmire.

"Al-Qaida does not exist in the form that it existed in 9/11," Jack Hooper, the deputy director of operations for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told a Senate committee last week.

"What al-Qaida created (was) an ideology and an operational doctrine that disparate activists have seized upon."...

Studies by security officials in Belgium, Britain and Canada have all found one common intersection for Islamic extremism among younger citizens.

The Internet, according to a report released in March by Belgium's intelligence service, provides "an ideological source of inspiration for jihadists worldwide."

Much of the inflammatory material is theological rubbish, "often literally cut from Internet publications and pasted together into a personal ideology of revenge against Western political, economic and cultural (power)."

In a footnote, the same report notes a number of young Dutch Muslims are represented on the Internet as emirs based on little more than debating skills and "their seemingly ready knowledge of historical quotations on religious issues and violent jihad - which they merely found on the Internet themselves."

Indeed, any suburban teen with the Internet can become not just a disciple of extremist ideology, but fashion themselves as leaders in a destructive movement they may scarcely comprehend.

Hooper laid it out in simple language when speaking to the Senate committee last week.

"You can become radicalized, you can become committed to the al-Qaida ideology without ever having been to an al-Qaida training camp . . . in Pakistan or Afghanistan," said the CSIS deputy.

"You can learn techniques and acquire materials over the Internet. You can assemble an operational cell over the Internet."

[moe75]

These guys are following the same route that's been so successful throughout history. Get the sensitive young, use them up and spit them out. And when you've achieved your goals, kill them too.

Straight out of Lenin or Mao or any radical textbook. It's eerily similar to what the Khmer Rouge did in Kampuchea in the 60's and 70's. Get them in the cradle, fill them with hate, and let them loose.

[Dee]

Canadian catch leads to American anxiety (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060605.terror-wash05/BNStory/International/)
While they laud successful strike, U.S. politicians say it is a bad omen

WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. officials hailed Canada's anti-terrorism efforts yesterday, but critics warned that Islamic extremists lurking north of a porous border would inevitably strike American targets.

"Canadians have had a very great success in their counterterrorism efforts," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday, adding "we don't know of any indication that there is a U.S. part to this."

But some U.S. politicians, fearing that lax security and the presence of a large Muslim population in Canada makes the country a natural staging ground for terrorist strikes, pointed to the arrests as a grim harbinger of future attacks.

* How lax can our security be? We did after all catch these nitwits before they took action. Can't say as much for the US on the 9/11 attacks, when the gov't allegedly knew far in advance that they were being planned.

"Americans should be very concerned," said Peter King, a Republican congressman from New York. "There's a large al-Qaeda presence in Canada . . . because of their very liberal immigration laws, because of how political asylum is granted so easily."

* An uninformed and irresponsible statement. What "large al-Qaeda presence"? This was a group of angry young thugs acting of their own volition. Those arrested were Canadian born Canadian citizens, not immigrants at all. Nor, it seems, do they uphold the Islamic belief that killing is a major sin. Americans should be very concerned. Sounds like good pre election bulldoody to me.

Mr. King, who chairs the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, blamed the former Liberal government, saying it was soft on terrorism.

Although only one known al-Qaeda terrorist attack was launched from Canada at a U.S. target -- the thwarted 1999 attempt by Ahmed Ressam to bomb the Los Angeles airport -- many Americans still believe some of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackers infiltrated from Canada.

Canadian diplomats in Washington fight a constant, uphill battle to persuade skeptical U.S. lawmakers that Canada is not a terrorist haven.

(more ...)

[Dee]

Canada slams "ignorant" US comments on security (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/09062006/6/n-canada-canada-slams-ignorant-comments-security.html)
Fri Jun 09, 01:58 PM EST

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's government and main opposition party united on Friday to condemn "completely uninformed and ignorant remarks" by a U.S. member of Congress who said Canada was a breeding ground for terrorists.

Last week police in and around Toronto arrested 17 Muslim men, five of whom are under the age of 18. Several of them are charged with plotting bombings in major Canadian cities and training militants.

John Hostettler, chairman of the House of Representatives subcommittee on immigration and border security, said on Thursday that Canada "hosts an abundance of terrorists and as many as 50 terrorist organizations."

Bill Graham, head of Canada's main opposition Liberal party, asked in Parliament what the government was doing to "stand up to these unjustified and abusive attacks on Canada, making sure that the American media and the politicians understand and speak the truth?"

Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, described Hostettler as misinformed and called on him to withdraw the comments.

"I join with the leader of the opposition in repudiating those completely uninformed and ignorant remarks that we heard yesterday," he replied.

Hostettler also lashed out at "South Toronto," which he said was "the type of enclave that allows for this radical type of discussion to go on."

Toronto is Canada's largest city, but there is no area known as "South Toronto." Crimes rates in the southern part of the city -- which lies on the north shore of Lake Ontario -- are relatively low.

Hostettler's comments alarmed Canadian politicians, who are trying to persuade U.S. lawmakers to delay a law that would require all Canadian citizens crossing into the United States to carry a passport or a sophisticated identity card.

(more ...)