Terror Cell Busted in Ontario

(Pickering, Ontario) Seventeen males, mostly their teens and 20s, were arrested last night in a sweep of a terrorist cell allegedly plotting to launch attacks in Ontario. The suspects, 12 adults and five minors and mostly Canadian citizens, are believed to have trained at camps north of Toronto.

From TheGlobeandMail.com:

The RCMP says the sweep began Friday night in co-operation with an Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, or INSET. These arrests are the largest ever made since the inception of INSET. INSET teams are made up of members of the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, federal agencies such as the Canada Border Services Agency and Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and provincial and municipal police services.

Police said they have recovered three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Commissioner McDonell noted that this amount was three times the amount used by Timothy McVeigh to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Although the youths cannot be named, the names of the 12 adults arrested are:

1. Fahim Ahmad, 21, Toronto;

2. Zakaria Amara, 20, Mississauga, Ont.;

3. Asad Ansari, 21, Mississauga;

4. Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Mississauga;

5. Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mississauga;

6. Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ont.;

7. Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston;

8. Jahmaal James, 23, Toronto;

9. Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Toronto;

10. Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, Toronto;

11. Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, Mississauga;

12. Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue, Mississauga.

The investigation into the cell's activities was conducted by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) whose building was a primary target along with the Parliament Building in Ottawa. Sources say the spy agency was targeted since the suspects were particularly "angered by media reports accusing CSIS of racial profiling of Muslims."

From TheStar.com:

The chain of events began two years ago, sparked by local teenagers roving through Internet sites, reading and espousing anti-Western sentiments and vowing to attack at home, in the name of oppressed Muslims here and abroad.

Their words were sometimes encrypted, the Internet sites where they communicated allegedly restricted by passwords, but Canadian spies back in 2004 were reading them. And as the youths' words turned into actions, they began watching them.

According to sources close to the investigation, the suspects are teenagers and men in their 20s who had a relatively typical Canadian upbringing, but -- allegedly spurred on by images of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and angered by what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims at home -- became increasingly violent.

The terror suspects are expected to be arraigned today on terrorism-related and explosives charges.

I believe it's worth emphasizing that the media apparently were a major influence in prompting the suspects to organize and plan their terrorist plot.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.