Canadian Homegrown Terrorism Inquiry Sparks Arrests

Read the Full Transcript

• SPENCER MICHELS, NewsHour Correspondent:

  Canadian authorities today were sharing few details about the 17 alleged terror suspects they arrested over the weekend.

  After a year-long probe, 12 men and five juveniles were taken into custody late Friday and early Saturday by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP.

• MIKE MCDONELL, Royal Canadian Mounted Police:

  The RCMP, in cooperation with our partners, through our integrated National Security Enforcement Team, or NSET, in Toronto, have arrested individuals who were planning to commit a series of terrorist attacks against solely Canadian targets in southern Ontario.

• SPENCER MICHELS:

  Police said the group — all Canadian residents, and most citizens of South Asian descent — had trained together and amassed bomb-making materials, including three tons of the fertilizer ammonium nitrate, that can be used to create a powerful explosive.

• MIKE MCDONELL:

  This group posed a real and serious threat. It had the capacity and intent to carry out these acts.

• SPENCER MICHELS:

  Two tons of the same material were used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

  FBI officials said they were investigating whether some of the Canadians in custody may have had limited contact with two terror suspects arrested in Georgia last spring. Several of the suspects attended the same mosque and lived in Mississauga, a well-manicured, middle class suburb of Toronto, Canada's largest city.

• UNIDENTIFIED MISSISSAUGA RESIDENT:

  I didn't expect something like this just here, you know, just in my neighborhood across the street.

• SPENCER MICHELS:

  On Saturday, vandals smashed the windows of Toronto's largest mosque. Muslims make up an estimated two percent of Canada's population of 33 million.