TORONTO: The arrest of 17 male suspects — 12 men and five youths — accused of planning attacks has made the threat of home-grown terrorism seem real for many Canadians.

The suspects, most either born or raised in Canada, are alleged to have discussed a number of operations, including storming the parliament buildings in Ottawa, taking hostages and beheading the prime minister.

The older ring-leaders and the younger followers had split into two groups, police and prosecutors allege, and settled on two separate plans: to fire a gun into a crowd killing as many people as possible and to detonate truck bombs in downtown Toronto. They are also accused of plotting to use ammonium nitrate, a gardening fertilizer that can be mixed with fuel to make a lethal bomb, in more planned attacks.

Of the five countries on an Al Qaeda hit list, Canada is the only one that had not endured a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists. The top four targets — the US, Britain, Spain and Australia, have all been hit, if the attacks on Australian tourists in Bali in 2002 are considered strikes against Australia itself.

Canada has been warned twice by Al Qaeda, first in a 2002 message from Osama bin Laden and then in an Al Qaeda manual, that said Canada is its fifth most important target.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service says the 12 men and five male youths now in jail in Southern Ontario had become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by Al Qaeda, although not directly linked to it. They described it as a home-grown plot.

For many Canadians, one of the most puzzling and disturbing facts about the case it is that so many of the young men were born or raised in Canada. People in the UK confronted the same reality last July, when 52 people were killed in attacks by four extremists born in Britain. Many Canadians take pride in a society they see as tolerant of minorities and like the notion that immigrants leave the violent struggles of their homelands behind when they choose to become Canadians.

“It is difficult to accept that anyone who was born or grew up here, let alone those from the striving middle class, could sufficiently despise this country to be engaged in a plot to wreak havoc upon the institutions and leaders of the democracy,” wrote Christie Blatchford, a columnist for the Globe and Mail.

An editorial in the same newspaper urged Canadians not to blame the country’s open approach to immigration.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service