From Canada To The UK

Two terror ring attacks were averted today with major arrests. First in Canada:

A group of Canadian residents arrested in coordinated raids across the Toronto area for “terrorism-related offenses” had planned to blow up targets around southern Ontario, Canadian police said on Saturday.

Mike McDonnell, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said the group had acquired three tonnes of ammonium nitrate — or three times the amount used in the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City — as they sought to “create explosive devices”. Police said they had arrested 12 adults and five young people.

“This group posed a real and serious threat,” McDonnell said. “It had the capacity and intent to carry out attacks. Our investigation and arrests prevented the assembly of any bombs and the attacks being carried out.”

Where it appears that Canada has finally figured out that they are not immune from Fanatical Islam:

Charged are Fahim Ahmad, 21, of Toronto; Zakaria Amara, 20, of Mississauga; Asad Ansari, 21, of Mississauga; Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, of Mississauga; Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, of Mississauga; Mohammed Dirie, 22, of Kingston; Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, of Kingston; Jahmaal James, 23, of Toronto; Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, of Toronto; Steven Vikash Chand (alias Abdul Shakur), 25, of Toronto; Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, of Mississauga; and Saad Khalid, 19, of Mississauga.

Interesting enough this group was discovered by surveilling them using the web. That’s big brother for you.

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.

Police say they acquired weapons, picked targets and made detailed plans.

[…]Sources say the arrests involve a “homegrown” terrorism cell — Western youths who have never set foot in Afghanistan but allegedly were radicalized here, and who are thought to be potentially as dangerous as the cells that once took orders from Osama bin Laden. Western governments, including Canada’s, have repeatedly warned of this phenomenon and blamed recent attacks, such as last July’s bombings in London, as the work of such groups.

The Canadian investigation involves a complicated web of connections, with alleged ties to two men from Georgia who came to Toronto in March 2005 to meet with “like-minded Islamic extremists,” according to U.S. court documents.

This comes on the heels of yesterdays raid in the UK where they had hoped to find a “dirty bomb” they know exists:

British anti-terrorist police are hunting for a “dirty” chemical bomb that could be used in an attack in Britain after a major raid failed to uncover a device they believe exists, newspapers reported on Saturday.

More than 250 officers, some wearing chemical, biological and radiological protection suits, shot one man and arrested another during a dawn raid on an east London house on Friday.

Police made no official comment on the reports but said nothing suspicious had been found in an initial search of the property. They had also reassured the public in the surrounding area there was nothing to suggest they were at risk.

The operation, one of the biggest since last July’s suicide bombings in the capital, was prompted by suspicions that the house could have been used for making bombs or chemical weapons.

“Because of the very specific nature of the intelligence, we planned an operation that was designed to mitigate any threat to the public either from firearms or from hazardous substances,” said Peter Clarke, head of the UK’s anti-terrorism branch.

Some newspapers, citing unnamed security sources, said police believed suspected militants had made a “dirty” chemical device — a conventional bomb surrounded by toxic material that could be set off by a bomber wearing a suicide jacket.

“We are absolutely certain this device exists and could be used either by a suicide bomber or in a remote-controlled explosion,” one source told the Sun newspaper.

We now understand how the Canadian terrorists were discovered. But how about the British terrorists? Could this operations have anything to do with the arrest last week of Ahmed al-Batawi?:

The Iraqi government said Tuesday it has captured a key terror suspect who allegedly confessed to hundreds of beheadings. Ahmed Hussein Dabash Samir al-Batawi was arrested by a terrorist combat unit on Monday in Baghdad, according to the prime minister’s office.

The unit also seized documents, cell phones and computers that contained the names and addresses of other wanted terrorists and information on Islamic extremist groups, the government said in a statement.

Just wondering.

UPDATE

George at Seixon does an outstanding job writing about the silence from the left regarding these stories….except of course to bash Bush in one way or another:

So what did blogs like Firedoglake say about this terrorism-bust in Canada? Well I don’t know. Not a single prominent liberal blog has even written any kind of real post on the subject. The conservative blogs are all over it this morning, where are the liberal blogs? The predictable georgia10 at DailyKos offers this, finally, after several hours without mentioning it:

Seventeen suspected terrorists were arrested in Canada today; they allegedly planned to use 3 tons of explosive material to blow up a building. And how many times was Canada mentioned during the “border security” debate?

That’s all this story merits, blaming politicians for not taking the border with Canada seriously, even though everyone knows that people like georgia10 don’t perceive there is any real terrorist threat.

[…]I think the haunting silence from liberals on this issue can be summarized by a statement Michael Moore made some time ago:

What if there is no “terrorist threat?” What if Bush and Co. need, desperately need, that “terrorist threat” more than anything in order to conduct the systematic destruction they have launched against the U.S. constitution and the good people of this country who believe in the freedoms and liberties it guarantees?

This, more than anything else, is the liberal view of the Bush administration in microcosm. All the terrorism alerts over the past few years were not real; they were just creations by the Bush administration to scare the public into supporting him. Bush won the election by “fear-mongering” about terrorism.

[…]To them, terrorism is a fictional issue created by the Bush administration to control the masses with irrational fear. However, as this newest case in Canada, one of many including cases in France and Jordan, it gives them pause and they can’t do anything other than stay silent and ignore what does not fit into their warped worldview.

Other’s Blogging:

• In The Bullpen
• Assorted Babble
• Ranting Profs
  
• Hyscience
• Confederate Yankee
• Captain’s Quarters
• Blue Crab Boulevard
• The Political Pit Bull
• Darleen’s Place
• Stop The ACLU
• Yourish
• Atlas Shrugs
• A Blog For All
• Captain’s Quarters
• Wizbang
• Michelle Malkin
• Hot Air
• Mike’s America
• Right Truth
• The Sandbox

We now understand how the Canadian terrorists were discovered. But how about the British terrorists? Could this operations have anything to do with the arrest last week of Ahmed al-Batawi?:

Curt

See author page