According to The New York Times, an anonymous law enforcement officersaid the case against Ahmed and Sadequee was related to the November, 2005.arrests of three men in Britain , who were found to be having copies of the video made by Sadequee andAhmed in Washington, D.C. The arrests of these two young Muslims caused some sensationlocally due to the following reasons. Firstly, it was the firstterrorism-related case in Atlanta . Secondly, Sadequee was known in the local community of South Asian origin asa well-behaved and helpful person, who played an active role in the activitiesof Raksha, a local non-Governmental organisation, which does humanitarianwork among members of the local community of South Asian origin. Thirdly, the AlFarooq Masjid was known as a centre of moderate Islam. Its office-bearers triedto promote inter-faith harmony. After the arrests of these two persons, it cameout that pro-Al Qaeda propaganda material, including recorded cassettescontaining the messages of Osama bin Laden, were being distributed by somepersons regularly after the prayers were over, without any action being taken bythe office-bearers to prevent the misuse of the mosque for pro-Al Qaedapropaganda.
On June 3, 2006, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced the arrestof 17 Muslims of different background--only two of them above 25 years of age,10 of them between 19 and 25 years and the remaining five minors--on a charge ofplanning to carry out a major terrorist strike or strikes in the Ontarioprovince. The RCMP gave the names of the 12 suspects, who are above 18 years ofage, as follows. They did not release the names of the five minors.
(i). Fahim Ahmad, 21, Toronto ;
(ii). Zakaria Amara, 20, Mississauga , Ont.;
(iii). Asad Ansari, 21, Mississauga ;
(iv). Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Mississauga ;
(v) Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mississauga ;
(vi). Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston , Ont.;
(vii).Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston ;
(viii).Jahmaal James, 23, Toronto ;
(ix). Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Toronto ;
(x). Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, Toronto ;
(xi). Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, Mississauga ;
(xii). Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue , Mississauga .
The RCMP did not indicate how many of them are Canadian citizens and how manyare Canadian residents and wherefrom all of them migrated to Canada . The local media has identified Ahmad Ghany as a health sciencesgraduate from McMaster University in Hamilton . He was born in Canada , the son of a medical doctor who migrated from Trinidad and Tobago in 1955. Shareef Abdelhaleen is a 30-year-old unmarried computer programmer ofEgyptian descent. He migrated from Egypt at the age of 10 with his father who is reportedly now an engineer on contractwith Atomic Energy of Canada.
The National Post of Toronto that some of the arrested suspects were of Somali, Egyptian,Jamaican, and Trinidadian origin. One of them with the name Steven Vikas Chandalias Abdul Shakur could be a convert to Islam from Christianity originatingfrom either South Asia or the Caribbean . Jahmaal James also could be a convert to Islam from Christianity. It isnot yet known how many of those arrested are of South Asian origin.
During the arrests, which were made on June 2, 2006, the local Policeseized a lot of incriminating material, including three tones of ammoniumnitrate, a handgun and ammunition clip, computer hard drive, and a cellphone-activated electronic detonator hidden inside a small black fishing tacklebox and bags of camouflage clothing. The Police also displayed bootsapparently seized from a camp north of Toronto that some of the members of the group had allegedly used for combat training.
The Police declined to identify the intended targets because the investigationis ongoing, but said they were all in southern Ontario and did not include theToronto transit system. The " National Post " of Toronto hasclaimed in its issue of June 3, 2006, that the Toronto arrests came in thewake of arrests of 18 other suspects in the United States, Britain, Bosnia,Denmark, Sweden, and Bangladesh. According to the Canadian authorities, thearrested suspects seemed to have been Al Qaeda-inspired, but were not associated with it.
It is not known whether the persons whom the two suspects from Atlanta, Georgia,had met during their visit to Canada last year are among those arrested by theRCMP on June 2, 2006. The local media in Toronto has quoted an FBI official assaying that some suspects "may have had limited contact with the two peoplerecently arrested from Georgia."
The indications till now are that those arrested in Georgia, USA,. and in Canadawere probably self-radicalised. There is as yet no evidence of their belongingto Al Qaeda or any of the other member-organisations of bin Laden'sInternational Islamic Front (IIF). If at all they were acting on behalf of anyorganisation, a strong suspect would be the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF) of Pakistan,which has members from the Afro-American community in the US, theCaribbean and the community of Caribbean origin in the UK. It may be recalledthat one of the reasons for the visit to Karachi in January, 2002, by DanielPearl, the American journalist, was to enquire into suspicions that RichardReid, the so-called shoe bomber, belonged to the JUF. It was during hisattempts to interview Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani, the Amir of the JUF, that hewas kidnapped and ultimately killed. The JUF has had a presence in the US,Canada and the Caribbean since the late 1980s and in the UK after 9/11.