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| August 23, 2003 | Saturday | Jumadi-us-Sani 24, 1424 |
19 Pakistanis detained in Canada
TORONTO, Aug 22: Police Friday confirmed the arrest of some 19 people last week, who reportedly remain in Toronto-area prisons while an investigation into possible terrorist links is under way.
Police provided few additional details. But the Toronto Star reported Friday that in early-morning raids eight days ago, various police forces, working with Canada’s immigration agency, arrested the Pakistani-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 “threat to national security.”
“I can confirm that we assisted in the arrest along with Halton, Peel, York and Toronto police services. It happened on Thursday throughout the greater Toronto area,” Michelle Paradis, a spokeswoman with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said.
“All of the charges are Citizenship and Immigration. We were assisting,” she said, noting that “Project Thread” has been ongoing since February.
Members of an anti-terrorism unit said the men mimicked behaviour 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.
“(The Public Security and Anti-Terrorism) officers determined that ... there is a reasonable suspicion that these persons pose a threat to national security,” the summary stated.
One of the 19 men had been taking commercial pilot lessons at a regional flight school, which conducts training flights over a nuclear power plant, according to the police investigation.
He often brought an unknown male along as a passenger and seemed an unmotivated student, the summary said.
Two more of the men were deemed suspicious after regional police found them outside the gates of the Pickering nuclear power station in April 2002.—AFP
JAILED: Two Pakistani men, who came looking for work in the US earlier this month, are now in jail as terror suspects, our Washington correspondent adds.
One of them, Arif Mahmood, wanted to be a cab driver in New York. The other, Javed Khan, was seeking political asylum.
Both raised alarms at the Sea-Tac airport in Washington State when they tried to pay cash for one-way tickets to New York and were arrested.
Federal prosecutors charged the two men with only minor immigration violations.
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