- TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian
police arrested 19 men last week in a case that, according to court documents
obtained by a newspaper, has eerie parallels to the preparations for the
Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
-
- Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokeswoman Michele Paradis
on Friday confirmed the arrests but declined to offer details.
-
- "We arrested 19 people last Thursday," Paradis
said, adding the operation had involved four police departments from across
the Greater Toronto area.
-
- "They're all related and it's all part of, what
we're alleging, has to do with a group taking advantage of a system --
the immigration system here in Canada."
-
- The Toronto Star newspaper said the men were arrested
after a "pattern of suspicious behavior" which featured one man
taking flight lessons that took him directly over an Ontario nuclear power
plant.
-
- In court documents obtained by the newspaper, the student
pilot was described as "unmotivated" and he raised suspicion
because he has trained for nearly three years to obtain a commercial pilots
license that normally takes only a year.
-
- "He often brings with him an unknown male as a passenger,"
the document read.
-
- The alleged incidents evoke chilling memories of the
Sept. 11 attacks, where the suicide hijackers who flew commercial planes
into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington took
lessons at U.S. flight schools.
-
- The newspaper said two other men were considered suspicious
after police found them in April 2002 outside the same nuclear plant, which
sits near the shores of Lake Ontario.
-
- "They requested that they be allowed to enter the
perimeter in order to go for a walk on the beach," the document said.
-
- Police said the detained men, who are from Pakistan,
tended to "reside in clusters of 4 or 5" and changed addresses
as a group, according to the newspaper.
-
- Paradis said the investigation, called Project Thread,
began last February. She referred questions to Citizenship and Immigration
Canada, which did not immediately return calls seeking more information.
|
