Terror Suspects Plotted Truck Bombs

Terror suspects arrested in an alleged plot to attack Canadian targets had turned their attention to exploding truck bombs in the heart of Toronto's financial district, including at the Toronto Stock Exchange, according to a news report Thursday.

Islamic leaders on Thursday called on government and law enforcement officials in the nation's capital to attend a summit by the end of the month and look at ways to work with them on extremist views among the young people in the country's 750,000-strong Muslim community.

"Terrorism is a complete contradiction with the teachings of Islam," Karl Nickner, director of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, told a news conference in Ottawa. "It's a global problem and Canadian Muslims will never stop denouncing this ideology of terrorists."

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp., which obtained court documents filed in the case against 12 men and five teenagers arrested over last weekend, reported that some of the men began to focus on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Toronto headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service — Ottawa's spy agency — as well as an unspecified military installation as targets.

Fifteen of 17 suspects appeared in court Tuesday to set dates for their bail hearings, with the first one set for next Monday. The courtroom was stunned when they learned that some of the men had allegedly plotted to storm the Parliament building in Ottawa, seize politicians and behead them if Canada did not pull its troops out of Afghanistan and free Muslim prisoners.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced Saturday that authorities had foiled a terrorist attack and said 12 men and five teenagers had obtained 3 tons of ammonium nitrate, three times what was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in the United States that killed 168 people.

But some police later said that although the suspects had sought to obtain ammonium nitrate, they actually had been delivered a safe substance instead during a sting last Friday, then were immediately arrested on fears an attack was imminent.

Canada has been battling some sentiment in Washington that charges their northern neighbor of being lax on terrorism.

Republican Congressman John Hostettler of Indiana said Canada was in denial and he believes Ottawa should shut out immigrants and refugees until the country fixes its security risks.

Hostettler, who held a hearing on the matter Thursday on Capitol Hill, said the U.S. House of Representatives should not delay strict new border identification measures.

"We do not want to have to worry about a neighbor that has a very different attitude than we do about terrorism," Hostettler said after the meeting.

Americans, he added, would demand the Canada-U.S. border be shut down in the event of another terrorist attack like the one on Sept. 11, 2001.

At least one of those arrested was in a reservist unit in Toronto and received some military training. Another, according to the documents, signed up for an aviation course. Initial reports indicated the man hoped to train so he could fly an airplane into a Canadian target, but the CBC said Thursday that Amin Durrani in fact had enrolled in a maintenance course, not a pilot training program.

According to the court documents, Zakaria Amara, 20, of Mississauga, a city just west of Toronto, was leading the charge to obtain what it needed for three massive truck bombs.

The intelligence investigation found that Amar had obtained a remote triggering device and he was actively seeking ways to obtain nitric acid for a triggering device for the ammonium nitrate, which the men believed they had obtained, according to the CBC.

The court documents alleged that investigators recovered the remote control device in Amara's residence. To obtain the ammonium nitrate, Amara searched for suppliers on the Internet, using a public library, the documents show.

The documents also allege that Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, also of Mississauga, was also helping Amara to collect the bomb-making ingredients and find a secure place to store the chemicals and other materials, the CBC reported. It was Abdelhaleen who paid an undercover police officer the $1,796 down payment for the chemicals, the documents said.

According to the documents, the group rented a warehouse to stash the bomb-making supplies.

Two other suspects, Saad Khalid, 19, and a juvenile whose name is protected by federal privacy laws, were arrested at the warehouse last Friday, according to documents. They had apparently been lining cardboard boxes with plastic as a means of hiding the fertilizer bags.

One of the suspects, Steven Vikash Chand — who went by the alias of Abdul Shakur, according to the RCMP — belonged to the Royal Regiment of Canada, a reservist unit that meets in Toronto, Cmdr. Denise Laviolette told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Canadian officials say they expect more arrests. A U.S. law enforcement official said investigators were probing whether the men had any ties to Islamic terror cells in the United States, Britain, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Denmark and Sweden.

The Ontario Court of Justice released details of the charges Monday, which said the suspects faced charges that included participating in a terrorist group, importing weapons and planning a bombing. The specific details were made public Tuesday.

Police in Britain announced Wednesday they had arrested a 21-year-old man and a 16-year-old youth as terrorist suspects. The BBC reported that the arrests were connected to the alleged terrorist plot in Canada, but Scotland Yard declined to confirm the connection.