Police Swoop Foils Bombers

A terrorist plot, apparently inspired by al-Qaeda, to bomb targets across Ontario has been broken up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. In a series of co-ordinated raids Canadian police arrested 17 individuals, including five youths, who they say were planning a series of attacks. All those involved were charged with terrorism offences.

After the raids, which began on Friday night, officers revealed they had seized almost three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, the same chemical used in the Oklahoma City bombing in which 168 people were killed in 1995.

As sketchy details emerged of the arrests, a spokesman for the RCMP said it 'had arrested a number of individuals who were planning to commit a series of terror attacks against targets here in southern Ontario'.

All the men arrested lived in Canada and most were Canadian citizens, officials said. 'This group holds a real and serious intent,' RCMP Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell said yesterday.

The Toronto Star reported yesterday that Canadian youths in their teens and twenties, upset at the treatment of Muslims worldwide, were among those arrested. The names of those arrested suggested that they were members of Canada's immigrant communities from Asia and the Middle East.

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.

'This group took steps to acquire three tonnes of ammonium nitrate and other components necessary to create explosive devices,' said McDonell.

While the officials have not said what specific targets the suspects might have had, McDonell confirmed that Toronto's mass transit system was not a target. Police added that some of those arrested had attended a 'terrorism training camp.'

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 Britain for playing a role in a foiled bomb plot. He is being held in an Ottawa detention centre, awaiting trial.

'Terrorism is a dangerous ideology that knows no borders,' said Luc Portelance, CSIS Assistant Director of Operations.

Canada's anti-terrorism law was passed swiftly following the 11 September assaults, particularly after Osama bin Laden named Canada as one of five 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 Australia, all of which have been victims of terrorism.

Canada's anti-terrorism laws permit the government to brand individuals and organisations as terrorists and gives police the power to make preventative arrests of people suspected of planning a terrorist attack.

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