The path to terror in Canada
An exclusive report: Training ground
Pakistan -- The trail that leads to a terrorist training camp near Balakot, Pakistan.
Photograph by : Stewart Bell/National Post
canada.com
Stewart Bell, National Post
Published: Saturday, September 02, 2006
Three months after the RCMP began arresting 18 suspects accused of plotting terror attacks in Canada, an investigation by the National Post has uncovered a web of links to Pakistan. Today, in the first of four parts, the role of a Pakistani training camp is revealed.
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BALAKOT, Pakistan - A worn footpath climbs from the Kaghan Valley highway into the lush mountains above the River Kunar, on Kashmir's western frontier.
The locals all know where it leads.
An hour's walk up the steep trail there is a training camp built by Islamic militants called Madrassa Syed Ahmed Shaheed -- a long barracks building and a few guard posts to keep outsiders away.
Young Muslim volunteers from Pakistan and beyond have long trekked here to Balakot to train for jihad, and one of them was allegedly a Canadian named Jahmaal James.
A National Post reporter was able to locate the Balakot training camp and hike to its periphery, where an outbuilding could be seen, possibly a guard post.
Locals cautioned against visiting the "mujahedeen" camp, saying it was guarded by armed men who detained intruders as spies.
"Those people are mental," one man said.
An accused member of the Toronto extremist group that the RCMP says plotted al-Qaeda-inspired terror attacks in southern Ontario, Mr. James allegedly visited Balakot for training during a recent four-month trip to Pakistan.
What the 23-year-old did during his stay in the land of jihad is the subject of an ongoing counterterrorism probe involving police and intelligence services in several countries.
The charges against Mr. James remain unproven in court, and his family denies the allegation that he went to Pakistan for training.
"According to my information, it is false," said his uncle, Mohammed Al-Attique. "If [the] Crown has evidence, he should prove it in the court."
Authorities believe Mr. James is part of a web of links that tie Pakistan to the alleged plan by Muslim extremists to storm Parliament Hill and set off truck bombs in downtown Toronto.
At least four suspects associated with the Toronto group are believed to have attended, or attempted to attend, training camps in Pakistan. Another was a member of a hardline Pakistani religious sect that advocates global Islamic rule, and several others are of Pakistani origin.
While the Toronto plot has been widely described as the work of "homegrown" Canadian terrorists, the Pakistan connection has investigators probing the extent to which the group was influenced by the South Asian nation's rampant radicalism.
Indeed, counterterrorism authorities in several Western countries have been finding links between domestic terror plots and Pakistan, particularly to an emerging player in the global jihad called Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.
Unemployed and a follower of Imam Ali Hindy's firebrand preachings at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in Scarborough, Mr. James left Toronto on Nov. 5, 2005.
After stopovers in London and Abu Dhabi, he landed in Pakistan. Within days he had consecrated an arranged marriage to the niece of Mr. Attique, a Toronto Islamic bookstore owner, but he also allegedly met up with a British-Pakistani known as Abu Umar.
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