Canadian jihadis used statues of Hindu gods for target practice

posted at 5:40 pm on June 7, 2006 by Allahpundit
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According to a prosecution dossier leaked to the Globe and Mail, which owns this story right now. Among the nuggets it reveals about “Operation Badr”:

• The alleged ringleaders were Fahim Ahmad and Zakaria Amara. Qayyum Jamal, the Wahhabist who led prayers at the mosque attended by five other suspects, didn’t enter the picture until Amara got impatient with Ahmad dragging his feet on the attack.
• The cops didn’t zero in on Ahmad, who had ties to terrorists in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the UK, until they busted two suspects for gun-running and discovered that the car they were using was rented with Ahmad’s credit card.
• Amara scouted for training camps. Training lasted for a week in December. They had one real gun … and one paintball gun and an air rifle. They also held a course on “building confidence.” Canadian police were watching them the whole time and allegedly heard them discussing targets, plans to take politicians hostage, and their intention to use multiple truck bombs as part of a simultaneous attack.
• They concocted a phony farming business, replete with business cards listing their e-mail address as Studentfarmers@hotmail.com, as cover for purchasing ammonium nitrate. The original plan was to amass the substance with many small purchases but someone apparently got impatient so they arranged for the bulk order that got them pinched.

There’s more, including Ahmad’s supposed statement that he turned to crime because the government was spying on him. Ahem.

As I say, the G&M owns this story so they’ve got a second scoop today: the RCMP claimed in a secret report to Canada’s Minister of Public Safety to have disrupted no fewer than twelve attacks within the past two years. Buried within:

A source with access to high-level security briefings said yesterday that the kind of persuasion that takes place between those promoting violence and younger Muslims is a more common occurrence than Canadians think.

“Let me put it this way, before this event, it was more widespread than most people believed,” the source said.

The Canadian government promised more arrests and their promise has been realized — in the UK, where a 21-year-old from Bradford and a 16-year-old from Dewsbury were arrested last night in connection with the Toronto plot. The older one is just back from Pakistan, says the BBC.

To see just how far this thing stretches, read this piece from the Times of London tying it back — obliquely — to Zarqawi himself:

On his website al-Zarqawi has encouraged young Muslims to take up the fight in their own countries and spread his religious war further than Iraq and Afghanistan.

One aim is to create an army of “white-skinned” militants, men born in Europe and America who can convert to Islam and become harder for the authorities to detect as they cross the world on their missions, including suicide attacks. Using skilled computer operators around the world, al-Zarqawi’s outfit passes on bombmaking manuals, advice on how to sustain terror cells and even ways to use credit card fraud to hack into vital internet sites.

The Canadian suspects are almost all Middle Eastern, of course, but the hub in the virtual network is a Swedish Muslim of Serbian dissent. Quote:

Experts were struck by how the network was radicalising non-Arabs to alter the profile of its operatives. This included using women recruits, such as the 38-year-old Belgian waitress, born to a white, middle-class Christian family, who died in a suicide attack against US troops in Baghdad last November.

A global jihad indeed, facilitated by the Internet.

Finish your reading with this. It’s red meat but it’s Lileks. Reason enough.

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