Plot Began in Chat Room

[Johnny Utah]

Plot Began in Chat Room

CSIS monitored discussions on bombing targets

'Training camp' visit turning point for investigators.

Jun. 4, 2006. 11:12 PM

NICOLAAS VAN RIJN

STAFF REPORTER

For most Canadians, ammonium nitrate — even after it was used to destroy the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, including dozens of kids in a daycare centre —is nothing much more than a commonly used plant fertilizer.

Farmers buy and use it by the tonne, mixing it into the soil to ensure a bountiful crop.

But mix ammonium nitrate with the inflammatory rhetoric of an Internet chat room, and it instantly acquires the potential to become something entirely different, needing only the addition of a little fuel oil to turn it into a lethal bomb.

So when a shadowy group of disaffected urban youth began talking in an Internet chat room in the fall of 2004 espousing anti-Western views, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was listening.

The spy agency, and an alphabet soup of other security agencies across the continent, closely monitor such sites, where talk may sometimes turn to buildings and bombs and bringing global jihad home to North America, to Canada.

Often it's just that — talk — but when CSIS began monitoring the sites allegedly used by some of the 17 men and youths arrested on terrorism-related charges in a sweeping series of raids across the GTA Friday evening, the Canadian spy agency heard enough to remain interested, and increased surveillance of the group.

While CSIS and police typically won't talk about their operational methods, the available techniques range from monitoring electronic communications, from cell phones and landlines to emails and computers, to physically following persons of interest as they move about and talk to others.

Four months after the surveillance began, two Americans, from the Atlanta, Ga., area, popped onto the radar.

Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee had been communicating by email with the Canadian group, investigators allege, and in March 2005 the two hopped on a Greyhound bus, paying $280 (U.S.) for two round-trip tickets to Toronto, where, according to U.S. court documents, they were to meet with "like-minded Islamists."

"According to Ahmed ... they met regularly with at least three subjects of an FBI international terrorism investigation," the court documents allege, and discussed "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike."

By now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was involved, and also monitoring members of the Canadian group. The federal police service was brought into the case Nov. 17, 2004, by CSIS agents who believed they had enough information to warrant a criminal investigation.

Link

The bottom line is the internet is watched for people like these 17 Terrorist suspects and anyone shouldn't have a problem with it as it did help prevent a Terrorist attack in Canada. This reminds me of the former now banned poster who was dumb enough to make a Terrorist threat..

[August1991]

From link above:

Although police haven't officially said so, sources have told the Star's Michelle Shephard that the final act in the multi-year investigation came when federal agents intercepted the group's order for the fertilizer, and arranged to have it delivered by truck.

But, the Star has learned, police switched the fertilizer with a harmless powder before making the delivery.

After the deal was done, the handcuffs came out.

Michelle Shephard of The Toronto Star has broken all the major parts of this story. She must have very good contacts in the police.

[Johnny Utah]

From link above:

Although police haven't officially said so, sources have told the Star's Michelle Shephard that the final act in the multi-year investigation came when federal agents intercepted the group's order for the fertilizer, and arranged to have it delivered by truck.

But, the Star has learned, police switched the fertilizer with a harmless powder before making the delivery.

After the deal was done, the handcuffs came out.

Michelle Shephard of The Toronto Star has broken all the major parts of this story. She must have very good contacts in the police.

Good contacts don't hurt if used in the right responsible way..