CSIS: terror cell busted
Bomb expert among four Algerians in Toronto
Stewart Bell
National Post
Thursday, November 03, 2005
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TORONTO - Canadian counter- terrorism investigators have dismantled a suspected terrorist cell in Toronto whose members included an al-Qaeda-trained explosives expert, the National Post has learned.
The cell consisted of four Algerian refugee claimants who had lived in Canada for as long as six years and were alleged members of a radical Islamic terror faction called the Salafist Group for Call and Combat.
The central figure of the Toronto-area cell was a former al-Qaeda training camp instructor who studied bomb-making at Osama bin Laden's Al Farooq and Khaldun training camps in eastern Afghanistan.
The group was watched by intelligence officers before being broken apart in an inter-agency operation involving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada Border Services Agency and police.
A senior CSIS counterterrorism official, Larry Brooks, announced the dismantling of the cell at a closed-door national security workshop held this week at a hotel north of Toronto.
Mr. Brooks told workshop delegates that three members of the group were deported this summer and the key figure left Canada voluntarily in March, 2004, after he was confronted by investigators.
The investigation was described as ongoing.
The group was unrelated to Canada's most notorious Algerian terror network, the Groupe Fateh Kamel in Montreal, whose most infamous member, Ahmed Ressam, tried to blow up Los Angeles airport in 1999.
But there were parallels between the Montreal and Toronto groups, notably that the members of both were failed Algerian refugee claimants who had learned how to manufacture explosives at the Khaldun training camp.
The case "is a prime example of inter-agency co-operation," Mr. Brooks told delegates. CSIS was the lead agency in the investigation, but police and immigration enforcement officers from the CBSA in the Niagara region were also involved at various stages.
"CSIS's mandate is to collect, analyze and report threat-related intelligence to government. This means that effectively, our intelligence is shared with a variety of domestic and international security intelligence and law enforcement partners," Barbara Campion, the CSIS spokeswoman, said yesterday.
"CSIS does not discuss details of specific cases," she added.
But on Monday, Mr. Brooks, the chief of counterterrorism for the Toronto region, gave an outline of the case to delegates at the National Security Workshop 2005, a federal initiative that brought together security officials and representatives of Ontario industries involved in critical infrastructure, such as telephone, hydro and transit.
Mr. Brooks did not name the alleged terror-cell members, but during his presentation he showed several photographs, including what appeared to be surveillance photos taken in a parking lot.
A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., claimed 600 of the estimated 3,000 foreign fighters in Iraq are Algerians, making them the largest contingent, ahead of even Saudis.
The Salafist group, better known as the GSPC (short for Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat), is the leading Algerian terrorist group. It is a breakaway faction of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group and is aligned with bin Laden and al-Qaeda's Iraq leader, Abu Mussab Zarqawi.
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