Canada: Living with Terrorist
Posted By RichC on June 8, 2006
Heavy subject today as information about a terrorist plot continues to seeps out from Canada’s recent arrest of seventeen suspects in a terrorist plot. Allegedly, these were Muslim extremist, possibly el-Qaeta, and were planning bombings, the taking of hostages and even the beheading of Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper. (Canada has 2500 troops still in Afghanistan that these 17 wanted to see removed) Although some like Joseph Cordiano, a Liberal in Ontario’s provincial Parliament, see the plot as “grandiose” and that he had “serious, serious doubts about their capacity to carry it out” … others see it far more serious. It certainly isn’t any more questionable than the coordinated hijacking of four airliners and crashing them into major US targets like the World Trade Centers or the Pentagon.
The time-line: Last week, Canadian police and intelligence agents disrupted this plot in a series of coordinated raids. Twelve men and five teenage boys were arrested and the men of legal age appeared in a courthouse in suburban Brampton, Ontario on Tuesday. They were shackled together, wearing prison T-shirts and remanded for a bail hearing next week. According to the written statement submitted to the court by defense attorney Gary Batasar, the suspects were planning bombings of power plants, the taking of civilian hostages and the beheading of the Prime Minister if demands were not met. Prime Minister Harper was asked for his thoughts on being a personal target but he sloughed it off as a joke saying “I can live with all these threats as long as they are not from my caucus.” It must be disturbing to know a plot like this was being devised and that you were being personally targeted. How many other plots are still out there?
If these suspects living what seemed to be normal lives in Canada are willing to attack Canadians, how many people are there doing the same thing in the US? At what point to the peace loving people living and worshipping in communities here and in other countries have some knowledge of these Islamic radicals. Shouldn’t they start to step forward and respond like responsible citizens in protecting their fellow citizen and nation they reside in? I’d like to hear that the Mosques and Arab communities were turning over information instead of providing a safe haven for these kinds of individuals to conspire. Maybe they are … but I’m not hearing it. I don’t doubt the secrecy that these 17 ‘could’ operated under, but at some point the ability to procure 6000 pounds of explosive fertilizer (the amount confiscated), gather 17 people together should have drawn the attention of someone living in the community. Obviously … and thankfully … the Canadian intelligence agency was watching.
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