Canadian terrorism probe widens
A Canadian investigation into what authorities say was a massive homegrown conspiracy to bomb Toronto-area buildings is expanding on several fronts. On Friday, Canadian police arrested 17 people — including five teenagers — who authorities allege constituted a domestic terror cell. The group allegedly purchased 3 tons of ammonium nitrate, three times the amount used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. And more arrests are expected in the coming days, as the investigation expands to at least six countries—including the United States. The 17 suspects arrested over the weekend appeared in a Brampton court for bail hearings yesterday. Ten suspects' hearings were postponed. Intelligence experts say the terror plot may be just the tip of the iceberg.
"It's been a long time coming," says David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for Canada's domestic security agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). "We've allowed ourselves to drift aimlessly toward terrorist infiltration. Now we're seeing homegrown terrorism."
Authorities believe the 17 suspects were plotting to destroy not only the Toronto stock exchange but also the regional headquarters of CSIS itself, which is charged with tracking terrorism. There are eyewitness accounts yet to be confirmed that some of the suspects may have systematically cased the CSIS building over a period of weeks.
"That may say something about the general level of security in this country," says Harris, "and the muscularity of some of the radicalism we are facing." Harris is testifying on Canadian security issues before the House immigration, border security, and claims subcommittee in Washington on Thursday.
It has also been reported that several of the young men charged in the plot expressed militant views and had misguided ideas about the Muslim faith, according to their fellow worshipers, and that they were galvanized by their belief that Canadian Muslims are oppressed and abused. Harris says that this view has been aggressively pushed by the Saudi-funded, Wahhabist-oriented Islamic lobbying groups that have spread stories of discrimination and cited statistical "studies" and anecdotes to demonstrate Canada's "Islamaphobia."
"It's unclear whether such propaganda is aimed at purposely alienating Muslim youth and rendering them vulnerable, consolidating the community for lobbying," says Harris, "or putting on the defensive moderate Muslims and non-Muslims, who might otherwise support vigorous security measures. "Angry young men are the tinderbox," wrote prominent Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente yesterday, "and Islamism is the match." Many Canadian Muslims see it differently; they believe that it is the government that's trying to scare them into silence. An attorney for one of the men arrested Friday, a 25-year-old restaurant worker, who the government alleges wanted to storm the Canadian parliament and behead the prime minister of Canada and other officials, said the government is engaging in fear-mongering.
"It appears to me that whether you're in Ottawa or Toronto or Canada or Crawford, Texas, or Washington, D.C.," said attorney Gary Batasar, "what is wanting to be instilled in the public is fear." Batasar spoke outside the courthouse yesterday and refuted the charges against his client, Steven Vikash Chand. "There's an allegation apparently that my client personally indicated that he wanted to behead the prime minister of Canada," said Batasar. "It is a serious allegation. My client has said nothing about that."
Former CSIS official Harris claims that Wahhabi Islamic groups are using all kinds of creative strategies to alienate youth and foment resentment toward government, including filing complaints of alleged discrimination before quasi-government institutions like human rights commissions. Some intelligence experts cite a recent case in Alberta, where an imam launched a complaint against the magazine Western Standard for publishing a selection of the incendiary Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that triggered riots in numerous countries last year. In order to establish his legal standing, the imam who filed the complaint, Syed Soharwardy, argued that his human rights were violated for a number of reasons, including, he claimed, because he is one of the "direct descendants" of Muhammad. "Therefore," said Soharwardy, "I am related to him through Ancestry." Soharwardy added the cartoons have "sighted [incited] violence, hate, and discrimination against my family and me."
The Alberta Human Rights Commission accepted the imam's argument for proceeding with the complaint, which, if adjudicated against the magazine, could result in hefty fines and also force the magazine to apologize. The commission also has the power to impose broader sanctions, like sensitivity training for media outlets. The magazine could incur tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees even if the end result is favorable and has called for contributions to its legal defense fund. The province picks up the imam's legal fees.
"It cost him nothing, effectively," says Western Standard editor Kevin Libin. "That's one of the multicultural blessings we have in this country. If someone feels their ethnicity or religion isn't being respected properly, they can essentially marshal the entire forces of government to go after who they claim rightly or wrongly has offended them." Libin says the magazine has received "an outpouring of support" from around the world because many readers and supporters of free speech view this as a "dangerous intrusion of religion into our liberal secular government and that it's an issue of government censorship."
The dispute — which could take years to resolve — shows how some of Canada's major radical Islamic groups, says Harris, "have, with elegant refinement, taken our complete measure." Harris was sued for libel two years ago for a comment he made on Canadian radio that questioned an Islamic group's claims to moderation. A court recently dismissed the lawsuit.
Some intelligence experts assert that several of the groups that have obtained the greatest political support and media visibility are those like the Council on American-Islamic Muslim Relations, Canada (CAIR-CAN) and the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), which have been criticized for what some view as their less-than-stringent denunciation of terrorism. For instance, in October 2004, the head of CIC, Mohamed Elmasry, when pressed by a television talk-show host, tacitly implied that all Israelis above the age of 18, regardless of gender, could constitute legitimate targets for Palestinian terrorists because they automatically become part of the Israeli Army after that age. Elmasry was also a strong advocate for an Islamic sharia law last year when conservative Muslim groups in Toronto were pushing sharia law as a parallel legal system in Ontario, allowing Muslims to settle civil disputes in religious courts much as Orthodox Jews have been able to do.
"It was another example of when conservative Muslim groups were speaking with a more extreme voice," says Libin, "than moderate Muslims who were saying they came to Canada to get away from sharia law." The Ontario government ultimately voted against instituting sharia but also outlawed all other religious tribunals, including the Jewish tribunal that had been in place for decades.
In a press release issued yesterday, CAIR-CAN's executive director, Karl Nickner, said that his organization "joins all Canadians in expressing relief" that the potential terrorist attack had been averted.
"As Canadian Muslims," added Nickner, "we unequivocally condemn terrorism in all of its forms."
In a talk given at a Marxism conference this year in Toronto titled "Islamaphobia, the Left, and the Canadian State," Elmasry said that for Canadian Muslims, freedom of religion "is less assured" than it was five years ago and that Muslims have encountered more discrimination and harassment in the workplace or schools.
"The government and media," Elmasry said, "have shown they couldn't care less." Elmasry said that young Canadian Muslims, especially women, "are made to feel like strangers, foreigners, and aliens in their own country."
Elmasry told U.S. News that his message to Canadian Muslims is that if and when the 17 suspects are proved guilty of plotting terrorist attacks, "the community should not feel guilty by association and the media and the public should not find the community guilty by association." Elmasry says his message to youth and to parents has always been to beware of dangerous influences. In a campaign titled "Be Safe Than Sorry," the CIC has, says Elmasry, distributed fliers saying that "Some misguided Muslims may try to recruit Canadian Muslims, especially our young people, and use them to commit crimes against our country, or abroad." Elmasry says he has always advocated that Muslims who want change should pick up a ballot rather than a gun. As for his controversial comments regarding all Israelis as potential terrorist targets, Elmasry said he was quoted out of context. "I never said the words," said Elmasry, "the media is saying."
Some say these controversies have had a chilling effect on Canadian politicians' willingness to deal with radical Islamists and to deal with the country's massive immigration and refugee problems. "Some of our politicians," says Harris, "had been playing footsie with radical and terrorist sympathetic elements."
Case in point: In 2002-2003, the Canadian government published a list of organizations that are deemed illegal under the Canadian Criminal Code because of a terrorist nexus. There was no mention of the Palestinian groups Hamas or Hezbollah. Canada's foreign minister at the time, Bill Graham, speaking on behalf of the cabinet, defended the right of these organizations to exist legally in Canada, based, he said, on the need to distinguish the military wings of these groups from their social-work wings. The government finally declared that Hamas and Hezbollah were illegal only after a citizens' organization threatened to sue the government.
But Friday's arrests and other recent developments are viewed as a sign that the newly elected conservative government in Canada is taking terrorism more seriously than its liberal predecessors. Case in point: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers terrorist group, responsible for assassinating Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, has been outlawed in many western countries. Until recently, Canada remained the exception. The Tamil Tiger hub in Canada is in Toronto. One widely used think-tank estimate says Canada has the one of the largest concentrations of ethnic Tamils in the world outside of Sri Lanka, including as many as 10,000 former trained Tamil Tiger guerrillas. But just weeks ago, the new conservative government outlawed the Tamil Tigers, another sign that Canada is taking terrorism threats more seriously.
Is it too late? Last week, appearing before a Canadian national security Senate committee, the deputy director of operations for CSIS, Jack Hooper, said that Canada was seeing the same sort of spiraling Islamic fundamentalism that resulted in the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings. His statement sent shock waves through the country. But Toronto Mayor David Miller says his city is still "incredibly safe," despite last week's raids. Miller said he will talk to Toronto's tourism officials to continue to make "strong efforts" to overcome the negative publicity from the arrests.
Here in the United States, the FBI is continuing to investigate exactly what links two Georgia men — who were arrested this spring — may have had to the Canadian plot. According to the FBI, the men traveled to Toronto last March and met with at least three of the Canadian suspects.
FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko says the bureau has worked closely with Canadian police since the arrest of the Georgia men, who allegedly discussed strategic locations in the United States such as oil refineries and military bases that might make tempting terrorist targets. But at this point, there is no indication that there was anything but talk, says an FBI official.
"The concern is more the fact that this could happen here, that you could have a group of people who could form a model like this," says this official. "They're not connected to al Qaeda or a known terrorist group, but they could be a sympathizer or a fence-jumper."