Police detained 19 people, who remain in Toronto area jails while an investigation into possible terrorist links continues, the Toronto Star reported Friday. In pre-dawn raids last week, several different police forces, working with Canadaâs immigration agency, arrested the Pakistan-born men, charging some of them with immigration violations while others have not been charged. Those men can be held under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act without charges if they are considered to be a âthreat to national security.â
| That's a pretty tight definition up north... |
âI can confirm that we were part of the arrests last Thursday. We arrested 19 people, but all in an assist to Immigration,â Michelle Paradis, a spokeswoman with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, told the daily. Members of an anti-terrorism unit said the men mimicked behavior of a larger group that appeared to be suspicious, according to a four-page August 19 summary on their detention obtained by the Toronto Star. â(The Public Security and Anti-Terrorism) officers determined that based on the structure of this group, their associations and connected events, there is a reasonable suspicion that these persons pose a threat to national security,â the summary states. One of the 19 men had been taking commercial pilot lessons on a multi-engine airplane at a regional flight school, which flies over a nuclear power plant for training, according to the police investigation, dubbed âProject Thread.â He often brought an unknown male as a passenger and seemed an unmotivated student, the summary said. Two more of the men â who were mostly students or refugee claimants â were deemed suspicious after regional police found them outside the gates of the Pickering nuclear power station in April 2002.2. A lawyer for two of the detained men, Mohammed Syed, said what was provided as âreasonable suspicionâ at a detention review hearing this week was pure innuendo.
| "Lies! All lies! Y'r honor, my client was jus' standin' there, mindin' his own bidnid, when these guys comes up an' arrests him! It ain't nuttin' but discrimination, that's what it ain't nuttin' but! Never woulda happened if he hadn't been wearin' a turban and rollin' his eyes!" |
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