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Canada 17: More Connections

Two of the men arrested in Canada, now known as the "Canada 17" were arrested in Buffalo New York in August 13, 2005. What did they do? Oh, well they apparently were trying to smuggle handguns into Canada by taping them to their bodies. You'll remember Buffalo as the location of one of the cells that were broken in the days just after 9/11.

Now, what would you boys need handguns for in lovely liberal progressive Canada?

Oh, and on the Georgia Tech angle? In October 2005, Explosive devices were fond near the campus. Is there a connection? well not yet, but its awfully interesting.

The most shocking thing about the Canada 17 is the fact that several of them are underage, meaning we dont know their identities, but this is not a new thing to the Canadian Jihadis. One of the most controversial inmates in Guantanamo is Omar Khadir. So what did he do? Well little Omar was picked up in Afghanistan by our troops. Apparently our troops dont take kindly to having hand grenades thrown at them.

Omar Khadir is controversial not because hes thrown grenades at troops in a war zone, but by the fact that he is 14 years old and not been shot dead on the battlefield, but is instead a detainee at Guantanamo Bay Cuba, and so his inlaw Abdurahman Khadr. More on Khadir family can be found here.

Oh, and where is he from in Canada? Vancouver? Ottowa? Nah, he's from Toronto.

More to follow...

UPDATE: Profiles are now available of some of those that have been arrested.


UPDATE II: "FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said U.S. authorities have been co-operating with Canadian police since they discovered that the two Georgia students travelled to Toronto in March 2005 and met at least three of the Canadians who were arrested." More info here.

Ok, so thats how the Georgia Tech sideshow fits in.

UPDATE III: The story continues to come into focus. From Canadas National Post:

"The Toronto busts are linked to arrests that began last August at a Canadian border post near Niagara Falls and continued in October in Sarajevo, London and Scandinavia, and earlier this year in New York and Georgia. The FBI confirmed Saturday the arrests were related to the recent indictments in the U.S. of Ehsanul Sadequee and Syed Ahmed, who are accused of meeting with extremists in Toronto last March to discuss terrorist training and plots. “There is preliminary indication that some of the Canadian subjects may have had limited contact with the two people recently arrested from Georgia,” Special Agent Richard Kolko, the FBI spokesman, said in an e-mail to the National Post."

August is when the two Toronto geniuses were busted at the border for trying to smuggle handguns into Canada from Buffalo.

UPDATE IV: More clarity from the National Post -
"It was Cesur Abdulkadir, a 20-year-old Danish-born Turk. The officers yanked the coat away and saw he was clutching a pistol with a silencer. His index finger was on the trigger. One of the Bosnian officers knocked the gun out of Mr. Bektasevic's hand and the two men were arrested. A search of the apartment turned up 20 kilograms of explosives, a suicide belt and a Sony 60 Hi 8 VHS tape that contained instructions on how to make a bomb and warned of a pending attack against an unnamed country. "God is great," said the voice on the videotape (a British forensic expert determined the voice was "more than rather likely" that of Mr. Bektasevic). "These brothers are ready to attack and, God willing, they will attack the non-Muslims who are killing our brothers and Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and in many other countries. "These weapons will be used against Europe, against those whose forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan.... We are here and we are planning and we have everything ready. This is a message for you."

Apparently the only people left on earth who think that Afghanistan and Iraq are not linked together are in the American Democrat Party.

Update: Welcome Instapundit and Hugh Hewitt readers! Just to catch everyone up and to give you all the "short version" it looks like this

The Canada 17 bust is tied to an arrest made in April in Bangladesh, which is also tied to a couple of students at Georgia Tech. Somehow the FBI managed to get custody of the Bangladesh individual, which has raised the hackles of Pakistani public opinion. The two Georgia Tech students recently traveled to Canada and somehow drew attention to themselves. The RCMP were either montoring the mosque, key members of the mosque or the training camp itself and were able to spring a very nice "sting" where the members of the 17 attempted to buy 3 tons of the highest caliber ammonium nitrate. For those of you following along at home, ammonium nitrate and any sort of accelerant ( diesel, gas, propane) makes a very large explosive capable of the worst kind of damage. During the 1990's we saw four examples of ammonium nitrate bombs, The WTC bombing( 1 1/2 tons), Oklahoma City( 1 ton), Khobar Towers( 1 1/2 tons) and Kenyan embassies ( 1 1/2 tons). Keep those numbers in mind whenever anyone says this was "no big deal". Three members of the 17 were already in custody due to being arrested in Buffalo NY last August while attempting to smuggle handguns past the border.

If you want to map out what the attack the Canada 17 could have looked like had it been allowed to continue; here is the analysis of the Kenyan Embassies attack in detail.
In October of last year, Some sort of explosives were found in and around the campus of Georgia Tech. I do not know if that is connected to this case, but the FBI agent I sourced earlier confirms what the original reporting has stated, that information received from these two individuals was key to the case moving forward at this time.

Summary: While the left was wetting its pants over the "Cartoon controversy" and making everyone go "absolutely flapjack" on the issue of "evil President Bush and his illegal NSA domestic phonetaps",it appears that a group of solid professionals on our side,both at home and abroad managed to stop June 5th from being remembered as something more than the day before D-Day.

Why am I paying attention to Canada and not the case thats going in the UK? First, theres only so many hours in the day, and second, its Canada. Canada is what every single leftist thinks we should be like and act like, from its foreign policy to its health system, and yet, here we are looking at the most dangerous cell of terrorists since Mohammded Atta was at work and yet, these guys were going to attack Canada! Not that there ever is a rational argument but there is no possible rational justification for this attack. This should serve as a marker for anyone about the distance our enemy is willing to go to accomplish its goals. There is no middle ground, no compromise, no "common ground" with these people. It's either victory or death.

While were all chattering away about the "Terrible Mexican border Situation" or "Harriet Miers" or the "UAE controlling our ports" or "Muhammad as a Cartoon" or "The NSA is listening to our phone calls", other people in our communities were working quietly behind the scenes in an effort to kill us. All those made up nightmares pale in comparison to what these people could have accomplished had our professionals not kept their eyes on the ball.

And boys and girls I need to remind you... this was only one cell.

And there are more out there, just waiting for the right moment.

Posted @ June 05, 2006 11:57 AM | Current Affairs

Comments

The guy from Georgia Tech was just putting dry ice
in water bottles and waiting for them to blow up.
He tossed a few out the window. I think that this
was more a dumb student prank than a terrorist
type action

Posted by: Mark From Atlanta at June 5, 2006 09:37 PM

That makes sense. I prefer that answer to the alternative. Ill take Knuckleheads over terrorists any day. The original article on the Canada 17 mentioned the Georgia tech connection, it was when I was searching for info on that story that I came across the mentioning of the Georgia Tech "bombings". Yeah, it was a leap, but seriously, if youre in a town where brunette women are disappearing and ted bundy is also in town, your suspect is probably ted bundy and not the guy down the street.

The whole thing took me by surprise, I follow this stuff pretty closely and I didnt remember hearing anything about any "terrorists at Georgia Tech", and the fact that this case was keyed on that information was just staggering to me.

Posted by: Frank Martin at June 5, 2006 09:50 PM

No go on connecting "explosives" at Ga Tech to the GWOT. Freshman prank with uninjured, but scared, janitor. See below:

http://gtalumni.org/buzzwords/nov05/article405.html

Grand Jury Indicts Student in Campus Scare

Theodore Hollot A lawyer for freshman Theodore Hollot, a 19-year-old Eagle Scout from Pennsylvania, says a bomb scare on the Georgia Tech campus was the result of a botched experiment he had observed in chemistry class. The consequences have resulted in a grand jury indictment.


Sandra Michaels, a lawyer for Hollot, who was accused of making bottle bombs, told the media he was only trying to duplicate an experiment demonstrated in class using carbonation resulting from a mixture of dry ice and water to cause a plastic drink bottle to explode.


The experiment went awry in ways Hollot surely never imagined — two residence halls were evacuated, the Atlanta Police Department bomb squad was called, police arrested him and he has been indicted by a grand jury.


Michaels said Hollot, an engineering student, observed the experiment in class on Friday, Oct. 7. Later that day, he saw dry ice for sale at a grocery store and impulsively decided to recreate the experiment. That night in his room at Glenn residence hall, he tried mixing combinations of dry ice and water in a dozen plastic bottles. He dropped them out his second-floor window to the lawn below and listened for them to pop. At least three bottles failed to explode.


On Oct. 10, while Hollot was in class, a Georgia Tech facilities worker picked up one of the bottles between the Glenn and Cloudman residence halls and it burst in his hand. The worker, Stanley Goss, was taken to a medical clinic for evaluation but suffered no obvious injuries. Campus police were immediately notified and 100 students from the two residence halls were evacuated. The Atlanta police bomb squad found two similar bottles in the same area and popped them. They initially called the incident a "terrorist act."


Hollot later told a resident hall adviser that he believed he was responsible for the campus scare. They went to the dean, then to campus police and to Atlanta police, who charged him with three felonies — possession and manufacture of an explosive device, aggravated assault and aggravated battery — and a misdemeanor charge of reckless conduct. He spent the night in the Fulton County jail was released on $7,000 bond.


Georgia Tech gave Hollot an interim suspension, which was later lifted, although he is not allowed to live on campus.


On Saturday, Oct. 22, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Hollot in the incident.


"It was a thoughtless act, but there was no malicious intent," Michaels said. "He had no idea that the bottle would expand to the point that it broke as it did."


Posted by: Steve Barton at June 5, 2006 10:01 PM

Ok, you already got the score on the 2L bottles "terrorism."

My reaction to the Pakistan-born Ga Tech mech engr arrested was also amazement -- but then I clearly remember the fact that tipped my feeling over to suspicion with the initial news coverage: they said he and his buddy had traveled to Canada. I said to my wife "bingo."

Posted by: Steve Barton at June 5, 2006 10:04 PM

Excellent! I'll open my "red herring" folder now.

Now to get the same level of detail on our two Candidates that the FBI has placed into this case and we can consider that one tied up.

Posted by: Frank Martin at June 5, 2006 10:06 PM

Frank, I just went back and looked closely at your post. The second Georgia guy was not a Tech student. He was another guy from the northern Atlanta suburbs who met the Tech student at a mosque or at some Islamic study group. The indictments were issued by the feds when guy #2 was in Bangladesh on a marrying mission, according to his family. Tech student is in prison in Atlanta. Guy #2 was apprehended by authorities of Bangladesh and turned over to U.S. authorities in NYC, where he remains in custody.

See front page of AJC from Sunday:
http://www.ajc.com/sunday/content/epaper/editions/sunday/news_4428e7f5235fe0b300c2.html

Posted by: Steve Barton at June 5, 2006 10:16 PM

Yeah, I'm seeing the story move from "three" to "two", and now its seems that only one was an actual student. Still has a Pakistan link, and a Georgia angle, so its still holds together.

It seems that the FBI and RCMP now have an official name for the project:
"Operation Northern Exposure"

Im digging into the two named individuals now to see whats their story.

Posted by: Frank Martin at June 5, 2006 10:23 PM

"Operation Northern Exposure" -- I like it. Ah, Janine Turner...

Posted by: Steve Barton at June 6, 2006 04:40 PM