Paper no. 1841	12. 06. 2006
CANADIAN JIHADI NETWORK - INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.74 by B. Raman ( To be read in continuation of my earlier articles titled "A New Jihadi Network" at  http://www.saag.org/papers19/paper1833.html  and "Sri Lankan Tamil in Toronto Plot" at http://www.saag.org/papers19/paper1838.html) On June 2, 2006, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had arrested 17 persons---12 above 18 years of age and five below--on charges of conspiring to carry out acts of terrorism against local targets. While they gave the names and places of residence of the 12 persons above 18 years of age, they did not identify the five minors. The RCMP have not indicated who among those arrested are Canadian citizens, who are Canadian residents and wherefrom they had migrated to Canada . Two of the 12 adults were already undergoing sentences after having been arrested last August on a charge of arms smuggling. They have been re-arrested in this case under the Anti-Terrorism Act. 2.According to the court documents, of the adults,  six were allegedly involved in  a plot to carry out acts of terrorism using explosives. Nine  are charged with undergoing training to carry out a terrorist activity.   Four are charged with training or recruiting others  and three  with obtaining firearms. All of them are charged with participating or contributing to a terrorist group.  Fahim Ahmad and  Zakaria Amara, who have been described  by the "National Post" of Toronto as the  leaders of the network,  face the most charges. Ahmad is charged with all six of the terrorism charges. 3.Three  of the arrested  ----one adult and two minors---- are reported to have recently embraced Islam from Hinduism. One of them has been named as Steven Vikas Chand alias Abdul Shakur, aged 25, who had reportedly migrated to Canada from Sri Lanka . He embraced Islam after arriving in Canada . The Canadian authorities have confirmed that he had undergone some military training as a reservist. According to a spokesperson of the Department of National Defence, Steven Vikash Chand joined the Toronto-based Royal Regiment of Canada  in June, 2000, and spent one summer taking basic and second-level infantry training. He was released from the army reserves in April, 2004, after he stopped attending the  regiment's weekly training parades and weekend exercises. His planned role in the conspiracy was allegedly to organise a raid on the Canadian Parliament, take some members of parliament and the Prime Minister hostage, demand the withdrawal of the Canadian troops from Afghanistan and behead them if their demand was not conceded. 4. The other two  converts from Hinduism have been described as  students of a local school called the Stephen Leacock Collegiate. They are  apparently minors and hence not named. It has been reported that they embraced Islam despite strong opposition from their parents. There is so far no indication as to wherefrom they  and their parents had migrated to Canada . Three of the five minors arrested were reportedly students of this school. Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, one of the 12 adults arrested, seems to have played a role in the conversion of the two students  and in motivating the three minors to join the conspiracy. Their planned role in the conspiracy is not clear.  Some of the local school counsellors have expressed concern over the attempts being made to motivate minors studying in schools to take to terrorism. Durrani is possibly of Pakistani origin, but this has not yet been confirmed. Some students have described him as "weird". The arrested persons had allegedly undergone a training course in an isolated area near Toronto last December. During the training, they used pictures of Hindu Gods and Goddesses for target practice. 5. Most of the arrested men attended prayers at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre in the Scarborough section of Toronto or the Al Rahman Islamic Centre in Mississauga . Two events are reported to have triggered off the enquiry by the RCMP and the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service (CSIS), which ultimately led to the unearthing of the network. The first was a report sent last year by a local Muslim Member of Parliament, about the objectionable activities of 43-year-old  Qayyum Abdul Jamal, who had migrated to Canada from Karachi , Pakistan . He used to work in a factory and then became a bus driver. He  was the oldest member of the network. He was reportedly very popular with young Muslims of the area with whom he used to play football. Frequently, he used to lead the prayers at the Al Rahman Islamic Centre. Six of the 17 arrested persons used to attend prayers at this mosque and had become friends at this place. His first wife died some years ago. His present wife, Cheryfa Macaulay Jamal, 44, is a white Christian convert to Islam. She has been described as very radical like her husband, though she was not a member of the network. 6.Jamal was reportedly very critical of  the Iraq war and used to allege that the Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were raping  Muslim women. He also used to say that it was unislamic for Muslims to participate in Canadian politics. Another arrested person, 23-year-old Jahmaal James, had allegedly traveled to Pakistan in search of jihadist training. His family has denied this and claimed that he went to Pakistan to get married. 7. The second event was the arrest in August last year of Mohammed Dirie and Yasim Abdi Mohamed, who were returning to Canada from the US in a rented car. The police found in the car three handguns and some boxes of ammunition. They reportedly told the police that they had bought the weapons in Ohio , USA , to protect themselves from criminals. They were arrested on gun smuggling charges and sentenced to imprisonment. During the investigation, the RCMP reportedly found that the rental for the car had been paid through a credit card, which was in the name of Fahim Ahmad. 8.According to the local media, the Police did not arrest Ahmad. Instead, they placed him under surveillance and monitored his communications. It was through this surveillance that they came to establish his links with Amara. Ahmad allegedly did most of the ground work such as organising the training camp, acquiring material such as amminium nitrate required for the acts of terrorism etc.  The local media has alleged that Fahim Ahmad  was in touch with shadowy terrorist figures in Pakistan , Afghanistan and Britain . 9.Amara was noticed by the RCMP while  trying to buy a detonator and visiting local libraries to read books about bomb-making and taking down notes. Initially, the group reportedly tried to procure ammonium nitrate in small quantities with the help of about 200 business cards. When this took a long time, Amara asked Shareef Abdelhaleem to buy a large quantity. The police, through a plant, allegedly offered to get him the required quanity and after the required  quantity of a substance resembling ammonium nitrate had been delivered, they moved in and made the arrests. 10.On June 6, 2006, the Brtish Police reportedly arrested at the Manchester airport Abid Khan, 21, a British citizen while he was returning after a visit to Pakistan . This arrest has been projected by sections of the Canadian media as linked to the RCMP investigation of the trans-national links of those arrested in Ontario on June 2,2006, but this has not been confirmed by the Canadian or British Police. The media has even alleged that Abid Khan belonged to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), a Pakistani terrorist organisation, and that he had visited Toronto in March,2005, at the same time as the two suspects of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin arrested by the US' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) while making a terrorism-related investigation at Atlanta, Georgia.Fahim Ahmad and Jahmaal James are alleged to have been in contact with the two arrested by the FBI. No official comment on the media speculation relating to Abid Khan has so far been forthcoming. 11. A careful scrutiny of the results of the Canadian investigation as reported by the Canadian media indicate that those arrested in Canada---all local citizens or residents----had contacts outside Canada with elements in the USA, the UK, Pakistan and possibly other countries, who shared their anger over developments in Iraq and Afghanistan. All of them felt an urge to avenge the wrongs allegedly committed to the Muslims in those countries. However, there is so far no evidence to show that they shared the pan-Islamic ideology of Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF). They do not seem to have belonged to any organisation wedded to the achievement of a strategic objective through resort to jihadi terrorism. They seem to have been a group of angry Muslims, who wanted to give vent to their anger. They did not see themselves as actors in a global jihad. From the profiles of those arrested by the RCMP, none of them seem to have been so well motivated as to have been capable of undertaking an act of suicide terrorism similar to the London blasts of July 7, 2006. 12. Such acts or planned acts  of individual or group anger, including some involving suicide terrorism, would continue to confront the counter-terrorism agencies of the world for some years to come. The agencies should resist the tendency to over-project them as part of a global jihadi conspiracy against the rest of the world. 13. Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the IIF try to project every wrong being committed to Muslims in any part of the world as part of a global conspiracy against Islam. The counter-terrorism agencies and the political leadership in the affected countries should avoid the reverse tendency of projecting every act of violence or planned violence by Muslims out of anger in different parts of the world as part of a global conspiracy against the non-Islamic world inspired by Al Qaeda. (The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. itschen36@gmail.com)
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