"Domestic Spying" Leads to Arrests of Canadian Terrorists

Well I bet folks living in Toronto are sure glad that domestic spying on homegrown terrorists saved the day!

From the Toronto Star:

Last night's dramatic police raid and arrest of as many as a dozen men, with more to come, marks the culmination of Canada's largest ever terrorism investigation into an alleged homegrown cell.

The chain of events began two years ago, sparked by local teenagers roving through Internet sites, reading and espousing anti-Western sentiments and vowing to attack at home, in the name of oppressed Muslims here and abroad.

Their words were sometimes encrypted, the Internet sites where they communicated allegedly restricted by passwords, but Canadian spies back in 2004 were reading them. And as the youths' words turned into actions, they began watching them.

For the spies who work on the 10th floor of a Front St. office building, with the CN Tower looming above and a hub of Toronto's tourist district buzzing below, this investigation was personal.

The group arrested yesterday allegedly had a list of targets, sources have told the Star, and the Toronto headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was one of them.

So were the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa and a smattering of other high-profile, heavily populated areas. But since most of the suspects lived in the GTA, it was the potential threat to the spy service's office and the chaos an attack would create in the heart of Toronto that concerned CSIS most.

According to sources, the suspects allegedly planned to target the spy service because many of them had encountered agents early in the investigation, when they were interviewed and put under surveillance. They also were allegedly angered by media reports accusing CSIS of racial profiling of Muslims.

Get that part? These crazies were angered by what they called "racial profiling" (it's so unfair) reported in the M E D I A. How DARE the Canadian government subject the peaceful subjects of Islam to "profiling." Why it just makes these young men so mad they plan to go out and blow up buildings and kill people!

Some of the group's members had even been spotted taking notes around the building, and at least one had reportedly visited the basement, one source told the Star.

The investigation began back in 2004, when CSIS was monitoring Internet sites and tracing the paths of Canadians believed to have ties to international terrorist organizations. Local youths espousing fundamentalist views drew special attention, sources say.

Since it was created 21 years ago, the spy service's mandate has been to protect Canada's security. It is not a police force; its agents don't carry weapons, have no power of arrest and traditionally have preferred to stay out of public view.

These terrorists had THREE TONS of the explosive fertilizer ammonium nitrate. That's three times the amount used in Oklahoma City tdevastatete the Murrah Federal Building.

The Toronto cell is linked to two Georgia men arrested in April for planning possible attacks in the United States.

No word on whether the Patriot Act (which Democrats attempted to kill) or NSA monitoring (which Democrats have attempted to curtail) of the Georgia terrorists communication's with the Canadians was instrumental in unraveling this plot.