Next attack here?

by John Thompson

08/25/03

Was the next 9-11 style al Qaeda attack being prepared in Canada? It may have been, but none of the evidence is overwhelming or conclusive.

On August 22^nd, 2003 the Toronto Star (which can do its homework now and again) released some of the details of a series of arrests that Canada’s Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Unit made in the previous week. The unit, a joint task force from various Canadian police and civil service agencies, has done some good work.

They arrested 19 men between 18 and 33 years of age from Pakistan’s Punjabi province — a hotbed of Sunni Muslim extremism. There were more grounds to be suspicious.

Most had entered Canada on student visas over the last several years to attend a Toronto institution that the police referred to as a "diploma mill". At least one man, who had entered Canada on a student visa, applied for permanent residency based on his lengthy course of studies at the "Ottawa Business College" — a school that doesn’t seem to exist. Others had outstayed their visas without leaving Canada. None of the others who attended more tangible institutions seem to have been conscientious students. They seem to have had other concerns.

Some of the arrested men seem to have had an interest in getting access to nuclear gauges in the construction industry — these are measuring devices that contain a quantity of cesium-137. If one gets enough of it, one could construct a small "dirty bomb" to scatter mildly radioactive material in the heart of a city. This wouldn’t cause much physical harm, but certainly would spread fear and panic on a massive scale.

Three of them seem to have had an undue interest in the Pickering nuclear power plant near Toronto. Two showed up at the station a little after 4:00 AM on a wet night, explaining they wanted to go for a walk on a nearby beach. Another enrolled at a local flight school and seemed to prefer training trips that loitered around the power plant.

Some other grounds for suspicion revolve around a letter of reference that one of their roommates brandished — a letter from Global Relief Foundation Inc., a charity listed by the UN Security Council and the US Treasury Department as a group what supports Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Another one had $40,000 in his bank account, but no identifiable source of income.

Some of them even lived much as al Qaeda members have in Europe; clustering in apartments in groups of four or five, and then breaking up and reforming in other ones. One group abandoned their apartment in the middle of the night, leaving behind most of their belongings except for the hard-drive of the computer.

This is not damning evidence that any of the men were terrorists. Nor is there any reason to believe that they were definitely planning an attack. Still…

At the very least, the 19 men (and a number of others) have used fraudulent means to enter Canada — as do tens of thousands of people every year. Student visas in combination with non-existent schools or shady courses of study are a common tactic for illegal entry into many Western nations, and terrorists have frequently used these techniques — including the September 11^th suicide attackers. At the very least, we can hold these men for questioning on these grounds and can deport from Canada; although our track record for turning down refugee claim requests is very poor.

Some of the other indicators will be difficult to explain away. Students and illegal aliens do tend to be poor — but why sneak out of an apartment and only take your computer hard drive with you? When you are poor, all of your possessions have greater relative value.

May of us occasionally go for late night/early morning walks, but why try to enter a high security area to do so? Most of us have made deposits to our bank accounts that we wouldn’t like to explain to Revenue Canada but, again, why would a poor student have $40,000 that he couldn’t account for there? The interest in nuclear gauges and the connections to a banned charity are also disturbing.

As Canadians, we can take some assurance from the conduct of the Anti-Terrorism unit. It is, as it should, looking for anomalies and following the leads to see what turns up. We may never know whether they found a potential terrorist cell or just another group of illegal aliens, but as a test of our post 9-11 defences, a passing grade can be awarded.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca