Scepticism expressed over Canadian terrorist plot

Daily Times
Jun. 08, 2006

WASHINGTON: The Canadian terrorist conspiracy should be “treated with the utmost caution and a large degree of scepticism” as “none of the alleged facts presented by the authorities can be accepted uncritically as true”, a commentator has said.

The commentary by Keith Jones of the World Socialist Website notes that since the weekend, Canadians have been subjected to “saturation media coverage” about the smashing of an alleged Islamist terrorist conspiracy. New claims of what the plotters – 17 including five minors and two in jail serving two-year terms – intended to do surface every day to keep the media frenzy alive.

“The track record of government proclamations concerning similar sensational and lurid terrorist plots, from Washington’s initial account of the supposed ‘dirty bomb’ plot of Jose Padilla to London’s chilling assertions about the terrorist aims of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian-born worker who was killed by London police in July 2005, eminently justifies a critical attitude toward the claims of the Canadian government in the current case. In these and other instances, the initial claims ultimately proved to be either highly dubious or patently false,” Jones writes.

According to Canadian authorities, the terrorist plot included plans to behead the prime minister and blow up the parliament building.

Jones points out that the federal conservative government, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officials and the media have all urged Canadians to remain calm and not to stigmatise the country’s Muslim community for the alleged misdeeds of a few. “But these statements are belied by their actions, which have been calculated to sow fear and panic, justify increased budgets for police and security forces and legitimise the Canadian armed forces’ counter-insurgency mission in southern Afghanistan,” he writes.

He writes that although the authorities have been cautious in revealing details of the terror plot, the media have amplified their claims in a “veritable tidal wave of sensationalist reports”. The commentary considers the liberal newspaper Toronto Star “exemplifying the attitude that the corporate media have adopted toward the country’s Muslim community in the wake of the uncovering of the plot”. The Star editorial board deplored the Saturday night vandalising of a Toronto-area mosque, but then proclaimed that the “onus” in preventing “a possible backlash” against Muslims lies first and foremost with “the Muslim community itself”.

“The World Socialist Web Site is not in a position to say whether there is any truth to the charges of the police and government that those arrested plotted terrorist attacks. But two important pieces of information have emerged that suggest the official claims of the Canadian government being in imminent danger: that the arrested men had, in the words of the RCMP assistant commissioner, ‘the capacity’ as well as the intent to carry out mass murder are, at the very least, grossly overblown; and that the authorities either let the plot proceed, if it, in fact, existed, or facilitated it so as to ensure maximum media publicity,” Jones writes.

It is clear, Jones argues, that the security agencies have had at least some of the arrested individuals under surveillance for months, and that senior government officials have long been aware of the security operation targeting this group. It has also emerged that the alleged terrorists were the “dupes of a police sting operation”. The ammonium nitrate fertiliser delivered by the policy decoys to some members of the group was fake material, which raises a “whole series of questions regarding when police learned that the accused were seeking to obtain bomb-making material, and whether police informants or agent provocateurs themselves suggested that the accused procure ammonium nitrate”.

According to Jones, “The timing of the police security operation is highly convenient for the Harper conservative government, which faces widespread public opposition to its plans to work more closely with the Bush administration and extend and broaden the Canadian armed forces’ intervention in Afghanistan. Parliament is also in the process of reviewing the new powers granted to the police and security forces under the Anti-Terrorism Act ... Prior to last weekend, only one other individual had been arrested under Canada’s new anti-terrorism legislation.” khalid hasan