http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...ME-ARRESTS.xml
TORONTO (Reuters) - A group of Canadian residents arrested for "terrorism related offenses" had amassed enough explosives to build huge bombs and were planning 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 in coordinated raids in the Toronto area. The adults were from Toronto, its western suburb of Mississauga and from Kingston, Ontario, at the eastern edge of Lake Ontario, not far from the border with the United States.
"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."
McDonnell said the investigation that led to the arrests had involved some 400 police and security experts, and taken thousands of hours.
"We must remain vigilant," he said. "Canada is susceptible to criminal terrorist activity as much as any other country."
Canada's spy service admitted this week it couldn't track down many domestic terror suspects and warned the country faced an increasing threat from "home-grown terrorists" who had been assimilated into society.
Jack Hooper, deputy director of operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said the service was trying to keep track of "350 high-level targets" as well as 50 to 60 organizations thought to be linked to groups such as al-Qaeda.
"We know who and where some of them are," he told the Senate's national defense committee on Monday in Ottawa.
06-03-06, 09:44 AM
