19 Terror Suspects Arrested in Toronto

August 23, 2003
By COLIN FREEZE
With a report from Richard Mackie

The arrest of 19 Toronto-area Pakistanis by antiterrorism agents prompted officials to fear the worst yesterday and call for security reviews of Canada's flight schools, private colleges and nuclear reactors.

The concern was raised after the news broke that a group of immigrant students and refugee claimants were rounded up last week in co-ordinated raids by Immigration Canada and the RCMP.

The men arrested on Aug. 14 in the early-morning hours have not been charged with any crimes. They are accused only of violating the Immigration Act through behaviour that authorities regard as suspect. Agents suggest that the pattern of the group's activities resembles that of the 19 hijackers who struck U.S. targets on Sept. 11, 2001.

The detained men's ages range from 18 to 33, and a document filed in a detention hearing says they shared apartments in groups of four or five. The document says one of the men has taken three years to do a one-year flight-school course, and one of the school's flight paths was over Pickering nuclear-power generators, east of Toronto.

And two men who told police they were taking a walk on the beach when officers stopped them at 4 a.m. in April near the power station turned out to be associates of the 19 men.

The document says all of the men came from Pakistan to Canada within the past five years and told immigration authorities they were going to attend Ottawa Business College -- a school that authorities now say existed only on paper.

Ontario Premier Ernie Eves said the case "certainly gives one cause for concern" and asked the federal government to step up security -- and ban flights over his province's nuclear reactors.

Provincial Security Minister Bob Runciman said federal groups are hogging vital antiterror information. He added he would review the integrity of Ontario's 500 private colleges and push for more control of the immigration system.

Federal officials are minimizing the arrests. "According to the RCMP there is currently no known threat to national security related to this investigation," said Dan Brien, a spokesman for Solicitor-General Wayne Easter.

Yet, national security is being invoked to keep the men in a provincial jail in Milton, Ont. "Based upon the structure of this group, their associations, and connected events, there is a reasonable suspicion that these persons pose a threat to national security," the document says.

A detention-review hearing is slated for next week. Mohammed Syed, a lawyer for two brothers who are suspects, said his clients are being held on "flimsy" evidence. Officials are accusing another one of the 19 of casing the CN Tower as a target, he said.

The document says that the operation that led to the men's arrests, Project Thread, started with a tip from Mexico City early this year, when a Canadian immigration officer there said the application of a student for permanent residency in Mexico was suspicious, because no trace of the Ottawa Business College could be found. Authorities determined the school sold academic documents to students who never attended any classes, the document said.

And after seizing 400 student files, investigators said at least 31 people used the school as grounds for entering Canada. All were Pakistani men, most of whom had middle-class backgrounds but no apparent incomes. They arrived as students between 1998 and 2001.

The document says the men lived spartan lives, sharing apartments furnished with mattresses, computers and little else. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, an RCMP hot line received tips about them.

The document says two apartments had unexplained fires; and a shotgun was fired at another apartment associated with the men. Police say one apartment had pictures of guns and airplane schematics lining one wall.

Officers say that they have three vanloads of evidence to sort though and that one member of the group has admitted to making false documents.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030823.uterrn/BNStory/International/