Where Terror Talk Turned To Action

It was in a remote, wooded area north of Toronto where, Canadian prosecutors tell CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian, terrorist talk turned to action.

According to the government's charges, which were reviewed by CBS News, just before last Christmas, 13 of the 17 suspects now in custody were attending a terrorist training camp located just a few hours from the U.S. border. They wore camouflage clothing, allegedly engaged in marches and survival training, took turns on guard duty and practiced firing 9 mm. semiautomatic pistols and pellet guns.

What the group didn't know was that they were being watched by Canadian authorities the whole time. Jason Rose's family lives near the camp property. His father discovered an undercover cop parked in their driveway.

"He wouldn't elaborate on any on his investigation," Rose says. "He just said he was doing some surveillance work."

That surveillance allegedly captured the group watching jihadist videos and taping their own training.

In the small town of Washago, Ontario, where the camp grounds are located, realtors told CBS News that as recently as April, group leaders were shopping to buy land. Prosecutors say they planned more training, more recruiting — and a safe house.

The plot allegedly developed under the direction 21-year-old Fahim Ahmad and 20-year-old Zakaria Amara, two high school friends who quarreled this spring over the direction the plot should take. Ahmad was pushing a hostage-taking attack on the Canadian Parliament, while Amara preferred truck bombings on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Canada's security service. They were going to pretend to be student farmers in order to acquire tons of explosive ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

Prosecutors say Amara possessed American-made remote-control switch components, like the ones in a common garage door opener, to set off the bombs — possibly by cell phone, a common tactic used by insurgents in Iraq.

One defense attorney calls the government's case "sketchy."

"If the objective was to create a terror in the populace," says Arif Raza, "the government has created a terror and fear in the populace."

But Canadian law enforcement maintains that it has the proof.

"There'll be rhetoric on all sides, I'm sure," says Toronto Deputy Police Chief Anthony Warr. "We'll just have to let the evidence come out and let the courts do their job."

Canadian prosecutors say the group called their alleged plot "Operation Badr," possibly a reference to the medieval Battle of Badr, one of most important battlefield victories in Islamic history.