Excerpt:
The three men arrested over a terror plot in Canada were in possession of bomb-making materials and at least one has links to a group fighting Western forces in Afghanistan, officials said Thursday.
Hiva Alizadeh, 30, and Misbahuddin Ahmed, 26, were arrested in police raids on their suburban Ottawa homes Wednesday morning, and formally charged with “terrorist offences” on Thursday during brief court appearances.
A third Canadian national, Khuram Sher, 28, of London, Ontario was arrested on Thursday.
“Investigators have grounds to believe that Alizadeh, Ahmed and Sher are part of a domestic terrorist group operating in Canada,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) superintendent Serge Therriault told a press conference.
“We also believe that Alizadeh is a member of, and remains in contact with, a terrorist group with links to the conflict in Afghanistan,” he said.
Police said the accused were in possession of a horde of material for making improvised explosive devices, including schematics, videos, drawings, instructions, books and electrical components.
During raids on the homes of the suspects, authorities said they also seized more than 50 electronic circuit boards that could be used in remote detonators.
This “large amount of terrorist documentation and manuals” demonstrates that the suspects “intended to construct an explosive device or explosive devices for terrorist purposes,” said Therriault.
Police also said they had evidence a member of the cell had received bomb-making training abroad, but they did not specify which suspect or where and when the training allegedly took place.
[…]Alizadeh, Ahmed and Sher were arrested following a year-long investigation by the RCMP, Canada’s spy agency and several police forces across the country.
Raymond Boisvert, assistant director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), said the intelligence that led to the arrest of the trio was provided to the RCMP.
Police said they arrested them this week to prevent one suspect from providing financial support to “terrorist counterparts” for the purchase of weapons for use against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
“This group posed a real and serious threat to the citizens of the national capital region and Canada’s national security,” said Therriault.
“Our criminal investigation and arrests prevented the assembly of any bombs and the terrorist attack or attacks from being carried out.”
Here’s the latest: Ottawa was a potential target for the group. Keep in mind that Ottawa is the capital of Canada, about an hour north of the northern tip of New York state.
WINTERY KNIGHT 