Canadians Nab 17 Terror Suspects

Seventeen Canadian residents were in custody Saturday on terrorism-related charges, including plots to use explosives in attacks on Canadian soil, authorities said.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they arrested 12 male adults and five youth and foiled plans for terrorist attacks against targets in southern Ontario.

The FBI tells CBS News, "There is preliminary indication that some of the Canadian subjects may have had limited contact with the two people recently arrested from Georgia."

The FBI arrested a 21-year-old Georgia Tech student and another man who they say traveled to Canada to meet with Islamic extremists to discuss "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike," according to an affidavit released in April.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman tells CBS News correspondent Bob Orr, "There are NO plans to adjust our security posture at the Northern border. This appears to be a domestic Canadian incident."

But CBS News terrorism analyst Michael Scheuer does not think of this as an isolated threat. "The borders are wide open between Canada and the United States, and it's very easy to communicate across those borders," he said.

Canadian police told reporters the group recruited angry young Muslims and maintained an al Qaeda-style training camp north of Toronto.

Officials showed evidence of bomb making materials, a computer hard drive, camouflage uniforms and what appears to be a door with bullet holes in it at a news conference Saturday morning.

"This group took steps to acquire three tons of ammonium nitrate and other components necessary to create explosive devices," said assistant Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Mike McDonell said.

McDonell said that is three times the amount used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

"I suspect it does not mean that there is sophisticated planning," Scheuer says. "Ammonium nitrate is a readily available explosive. It's a very rudimentary terrorist weapon but a very powerful one."
The arrests were made Friday, with some 400 officers involved.

McDonell said the suspects were either Canadian citizens or residents of Canada and had trained together.

Heavily armed police officers surrounded the Durham Regional Police Station in the city of Pickering, as the suspects were brought into the station in unmarked cars late Friday night.

The Toronto Star reported Saturday that young men in their teens and 20s, upset at the treatment of Muslims worldwide, were among those arrested.

The newspaper said they had trained at a camp north of Toronto and had plotted to attack CSIS's downtown office near the CN Tower, among other targets.

Melisa Leclerc, a spokeswoman for the federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, had no comment on the arrests.

In March 2004, Ottawa software developer Mohammad Momin Khawaja became the first Canadian charged under the country's Anti-Terrorism Act for alleged activities in Ottawa and London. Khawaja was also named, but not charged, in British for playing a role in a foiled bomb plot. He is being held in an Ottawa detention center, awaiting trial.

The Canadian anti-terrorism law was passed swiftly following the Sept. 11 assaults, particularly after Osama bin-Laden's named Canada one of five so-called Christian nations that should be targeted for acts of terror. The others, reaffirmed in 2004 by his al Qaeda network, were the United States, Britain, Spain and Australian, all of which have been victims of terrorist attacks.

The anti-terrorism law permits the government to brand individuals and organizations as terrorists and gives police the power to make preventive arrests of people suspected of planning a terrorist attack.

Though many view Canada as an unassuming neutral nation that has skirted terrorist attacks, it has suffered its share of aggression, including the 1985 Air India bombing, in which 329 people were killed, most of them Canadian citizens.

Intelligence officials believe at least 50 terror groups now have some presence in the North American nation and have long complained that the country's immigration laws and border security are too weak to weed out potential terrorists.

It was not clear if the Canadian arrests were at all connected to terror raids that took place in east London Friday when hundreds of anti-terrorist police, some in biochemical suits, raided a house in and arrested two men, shooting and wounding one of them.

The raid was one of the largest in the capital since bombings of London's transport network in July killed 52 people. Police said they do not believe the suspected new threat was linked to those attacks.

Police did not release full details of the operation but British media reported that authorities suspected that a chemical weapon had been built at the house for use against a British target.

Police did say that officers had not discovered any weapon or device.

Peter Clarke, head of the anti-terrorist branch of London's Metropolitan Police, said the raid had been in response to information about a threat from firearms or "hazardous substances."

"Because of the very specific nature of the intelligence, we planned an operation that was designed to mitigate any threat to the public," he said.

A 23-year-old suspect was shot in the shoulder and was undergoing hospital treatment. It was unclear if he had been armed. Neighbors said he worked as a letter-carrier and driver for Britain's postal service.

The other suspect, 20, was held on suspicion of terrorism and questioned at a high-security police station.

Neighbors said the arrested men were British-born Muslim brothers.