Arrests Shock Canadian Muslims
Several members of a suspected terrorist ring prayed daily at a storefront mosque in a middle-class city west of Toronto but never spoke of hurting others, one of their prayer leaders said.
"I will say that they were steadfast, religious people. There's no doubt about it. But here we always preach peace and moderation," Qamrul Khanson, an imam at the one-room Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, said Sunday.
The 40-50 Muslim families who worship at the mosque were astonished, he said, to learn that police had arrested 12 adults, ages 19 to 43, and five suspects younger than 18 on Friday and Saturday, charging them with plotting an attack in southern Ontario. Two Americans who met with the suspects also are in custody.
The group acquired what was supposed to be three tons of ammonium nitrate from undercover Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in a sting operation, the Toronto Star has reported. The Star, however, citing unnamed sources, said they received a harmless substance. The fertilizer can be mixed with fuel oil or other ingredients to make a bomb.
That amount of ammonium nitrate is three times the amount used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, said assistant Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Mike McDonell. The bombing of the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killed 168 people and injured more than 800.
Officials said the operation involved some 400 intelligence and law-enforcement officers and was the largest counterterrorism operation in Canada since the nation's Anti-Terrorism Act was adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Toronto Star reported that the investigation began in 2004 with the monitoring of Internet chat rooms.
While there was no indication that the suspects were planning an attack in the United States, the arrests, however, are raising new concerns about security along the 4,000-mile long U.S.-Canada border.
Critics have long worried that Canada's liberal immigration policies and a porous border make for a dangerous mix, CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports.
Christopher Whitcomb, a former FBI agent and a CBS News terrorism analyst, says "The biggest problem is that with a 4,000-mile border we have so much territory it's virtually impossible for the Border Patrol to secure all of that. We've addressed all of the issues in Mexico, but I think we really haven't looked much along the same lines along the Canadian border."
Whitcomb says that while "it may have been relatively easy" for the suspects to cross the border into the U.S., "that doesn't mean they could have done any harm. The three tons of ammonium nitrate they're trying to get into the United States would not have come in."
U.S. Secretary of State
The 17 men arrested represent a spectrum of Canadian society, from the unemployed to a school bus driver to the college-educated. The 12 adults live in Toronto, Mississauga and Kingston, Ontario.
Police said the suspects, all citizens or residents of Canada, had trained together.
"For various reasons, they appeared to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al Qaeda," Luc Portelance, the assistant director of operations with CSIS — Canada's spy agency, said Saturday.
The oldest suspect, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, often led prayers at the storefront mosque.
Khanson said Jamal's Friday night prayers were "more aggressive" than those of other prayer leaders, but there was no talk of hostility or terrorism.
The modest mosque is sandwiched between The Cafe Khan, which offers Pakistani kabobs, and a convenience store in Mississauga, a city of 700,000 people with many immigrants. Mohammed Jan works at the cafe and said several suspects often came in for snacks after prayers.
"It's pretty shocking. They used to come every day and they just seemed normal," Jan said. "I definitely didn't find their behavior suspicious."
Neighbors said Jamal's wife drove a school bus, and he was always home and did not seem to work regularly. The couple has three small children, neighbors said.
Jerry Tavares of Brazil lives two doors down from Jamal's home. He said Jamal was unfriendly and rarely interacted with the neighbors.
"I wasn't surprised," the construction worker said, adding that he was afraid and intends to move out of the neighborhood with his wife and toddler. "You never know who lives next door."
Another neighbor, Peter Smith, said a half-dozen SWAT team officers converged on the home Friday evening and began screaming at the family to get outside and get down on the ground. Even the young children were handcuffed, Smith said.
"Other kids were yelling, 'Terrorists! Terrorists!' and they were asking their mom, 'Mom, are we terrorists?"' he said.
Nada Farooq, the wife of 20-year-old suspect Zakaria Amara, described how police crashed into the family's home as the couple played with their 8-month-old baby. Family members were moved to the garage and her husband was taken away, she said.
"They're not guilty," she told CTV News. "They're still innocent until proven guilty and yet they're taking measures as though they're monsters."
FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said in Washington there may have been a connection between the Canadian suspects and a Georgia Tech student and another American who had traveled to Canada to meet with Islamic extremists to discuss locations for a terrorist strike.
Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, U.S. citizens who grew up in the Atlanta area, were arrested in March.
The 17 suspects are scheduled to appear again in court Tuesday.
A government official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that more warrants were being drawn up and further arrests were likely. But Cpl. Michele Paradis, a spokeswoman for the Mounties, said no more arrests were expected in coming days.
"Once we once analyze and sort through everything that was seized as a result there may be (more arrests)," she said. "At this point we are confident that we have the majority of people."
Muslim leaders were concerned that the highly publicized arrests would cause a backlash against their community. A mosque in northwest Toronto was vandalized overnight, with 25 windows and three doors smashed, police said.
Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, told the AP that he and other Muslim leaders were getting threatening e-mails.
"We hope Canadians will be more rational and consider the facts," Elmasry said.