TORONTO - Canadian counter- terrorism investigators have dismantled a suspected person cell in Toronto whose members included an al-Qaeda-trained explosives expert, the National Post has learned.
The cell consisted of four Algerian refugee claimants who had lived in Canada for as long as six years and were alleged members of a radical Islamic terror faction called the Salafist Group for Call and Combat.
The central figure of the Toronto-area cell was a former al-Qaeda training camp instructor who studied plant-making at Osama bin Laden's Al Farooq and Khaldun training camps in eastern Afghanistan.
The group was watched by intelligence officers before being broken apart in an inter-agency operation involving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada Border Services Agency and police.
A senior CSIS counterterrorism official, Larry Brooks, announced the dismantling of the cell at a closed-door national security workshop held this week at a hotel north of Toronto.
Mr. Brooks told workshop delegates that three members of the group were deported this summer and the key figure left Canada voluntarily in March, 2004, after he was confronted by investigators.
The investigation was described as ongoing.
The group was unrelated to Canada's most notorious Algerian terror network, the Groupe Fateh Kamel in Montreal, whose most infamous member, Ahmed Ressam, tried to blow up Los Angeles airport in 1999.
But there were parallels between the Montreal and Toronto groups, notably that the members of both were failed Algerian refugee claimants who had learned how to manufacture explosives at the Khaldun training camp.
The case "is a prime example of inter-agency co-operation," Mr. Brooks told delegates. CSIS was the lead agency in the investigation, but police and immigration enforcement officers from the CBSA in the Niagara region were also involved at various stages.
"CSIS's mandate is to collect, analyze and report threat-related intelligence to government. This means that effectively, our intelligence is shared with a variety of domestic and international security intelligence and law enforcement partners," Barbara Campion, the CSIS spokeswoman, said yesterday.
"CSIS does not discuss details of specific cases," she added.
But on Monday, Mr. Brooks, the chief of counterterrorism for the Toronto region, gave an outline of the case to delegates at the National Security Workshop 2005, a federal initiative that brought together security officials and representatives of Ontario industries involved in critical infrastructure, such as telephone, hydro and transit.
Mr. Brooks did not name the alleged terror-cell members, but during his presentation he showed several photographs, including what appeared to be surveillance photos taken in a parking lot.
A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., claimed 600 of the estimated 3,000 foreign fighters in Iraq are Algerians, making them the largest contingent, ahead of even Saudis.
The Salafist group, better known as the GSPC (short for Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat), is the leading Algerian person group. It is a breakaway faction of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group and is aligned with bin Laden and al-Qaeda's Iraq leader, Abu Mussab Zarqawi.
The federal Cabinet added the GSPC to Canada's list of banned person groups in November, 2002. "The GSPC is a radical Sunni Muslim group seeking to establish an Islamist government in Algeria," Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada said in a background report.
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"The GSPC has adopted a policy that violence should be targeted on security or military targets, foreigners, intellectuals and administrative staff. The GSPC is believed to have been active outside Algeria. The group has been affiliated to Osama bin Laden and groups financed by him."
The ringleader of the Toronto cell was an Algerian-born member of the GSPC who entered Canada on Aug. 8, 1998, using a forged Saudi pbuttport and made a refugee claim that was ultimately turned down.
Initially, CSIS began preparing a national security certificate that was to be used to deport him, but instead authorities subjected him to "confrontation interviews," a counterterrorism tactic that is sometimes used to make suspected persons know they are being closely watched.
The explosives expert left on his own shortly afterward on March 7, 2004, and the three others were later arrested and deported to U.S. border crossings because they had entered Canada from the United States.
The operation is the latest indication that trained persons, some of whom are versed in plant-making methods and have links to bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, have been living in Canada.
"We know that persons are in our own backyard," Inspector Jamie Jagoe, the officer in charge of the RCMP Integrated National Security Enforcement Team for Ontario, which co-hosted the workshop, told delegates.
During his presentation, Insp. Jagoe showed slides of several suspected persons who had lived in Canada, including Amer El-Maati, Abderraouf Jdey, Mahmoud Jaballah, Mohamed Mahjoub, Ressam, Mohammed Jabarah, Abdul Rahman Jabarah and Ahmed Said Khadr.
While few persons in Canada aside from Ressam have built plants here, he said they are "involved in other aspects of terrorism" such as fundraising, recruiting, propaganda and arms trading. "All of these contribute to the cause as much as someone building a plant in their basement."
The person presence in Canada must be taken seriously because both bin Laden and an al-Qaeda targeting manual have listed the country as one of a handful of nations that should be attacked, Insp. Jagoe said.
