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Ottawa Shooting: In The Shadow Of The Toronto 18

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  • Ottawa Shooting: In The Shadow Of The Toronto 18

    OTTAWA SHOOTING: IN THE SHADOW OF THE TORONTO 18

    MacLean's Magazine, Canada
    Oct 23 2014

    Ottawa has a long history as a stage for militants--and lessons of
    past breaches haven't always been learned

    Charlie Gillis October 22, 2014

    It's seen as one of the sleepier world capitals--Canadian staidness
    wrapped in Gothic revival. But for political radicals and self-styled
    terrorists, Ottawa and its landmarks have long been enticing targets.

    >From the assassination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, a father of
    Confederation, to Wednesday's shootings, assaults on the symbolic
    nerve centre of government, military and law enforcement have carried
    extra resonance.

    Wednesday's attack, for one, partially fulfilled a scenario plotted
    in 2005 by a group of radicalized young men in southern Ontario said
    to be inspired by al-Qaeda. The so-called Toronto 18 had planned
    a coordinated, suicidal assault on the Hill involving truck bombs,
    shootings in public areas and the storming of Parliament by armed men.

    They hoped, among other things, to behead Prime Minister Stephen
    Harper.

    The scheme was distinguished as much by amateurism as
    bloody-mindedness. With the help of a mole, Mubin Shaikh, a joint
    task force of police and intelligence agencies was able to monitor
    the men as they trained with guns and explosives near Orillia, Ont.,
    then catch them attempting to order ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an
    ingredient often used in crude bombs. In the end, seven men admitted
    guilt in relation to the plot, while another four--including one
    minor--were convicted in court. Charges against the other seven were
    dropped or stayed.

    Shaikh, then a Muslim activist, viewed the plot as fantastical. But
    the impact would have been enormous if the men had achieved even
    a fraction of their destructive mission. Court filings, he noted,
    revealed that senior members of the Toronto group had cased the Hill
    during their planning, marking out entrances where MPs came and went,
    and noting how many--if any--armed security officers were on hand,
    where they were located and what kind of guns they carried. "These
    things were openly discussed," he says. "The plan was to have car bombs
    go off outside as a distraction so guys could enter the building."

    The case prompted parliamentary security to beef up screening protocols
    for people entering the building. But there were signs afterward that
    the area remained vulnerable. In December 2009, Greenpeace activists
    managed to scale the West Block of Parliament and unfurl banners
    decrying the government's failure to address climate change. Though
    the group represented no physical threat, the ease with which it
    pulled off its stunt alarmed some observers, including Shaikh. "I had
    convinced myself that such a thing couldn't be done," says Shaikh,
    noting that the 2005 plot involved gunmen storming Parliament. "How
    wrong am I now? This is exactly what the Toronto 18 wanted to do. My
    jaw is still wide open here."

    It was by no means the first time that political and religious
    militants have used Ottawa as a stage. McGee became a target of
    Irish-Catholic radicals after denouncing the Fenian Brotherhood's
    support for the U.S. takeover of Canada. On April 7, 1868, he was
    gunned down on Sparks Street, just south of the Hill, on his way
    home from a late-night parliamentary debate. He goes down as the only
    federal politician to be assassinated in Canadian history, but not the
    only victim of political violence in the nation's capital. In April
    1982, Turkish military attache Atilla Altikat was shot and killed by
    a gunman while driving to work in Ottawa. An Armenian militant group
    claimed responsibility. Three years later, members of a different
    Armenian group stormed the Turkish embassy, setting off a bomb at
    the entrance and shooting security guard Claude Brunelle dead. The
    armed trio surrendered to police after a four-hour standoff, but not
    before the ambassador, Coskun Kirca, broke several bones jumping from
    a second-storey window in a bid to flee.

    Finally, in April 1989, a Lebanese-Canadian named Charles Yacoub,
    armed with a .45-calibre handgun, hijacked a Greyhound bus and forced
    the driver to take it to Parliament Hill--apparently in protest of
    Syria's involvement in Lebanon's civil war. The bus bogged down on
    the lawn in front of Parliament, but Yacoub held nine passengers
    hostage for eight hours before surrendering to police.

    Such incidents are a troubling reality of life in a world capital,
    of course. In Washington, a fence-jumper who recently got deep into
    the White House, and a gun-toting man who got into an elevator with
    Barack Obama in Atlanta, have drawn attention to security measures
    protecting the President, forcing the resignation of Secret Service
    director Julia Pierson. And while peace-loving Ottawa seems an
    unlikely site for radicalism, Canada's part in military coalitions
    and counterterrorism initiatives is bound to put crosshairs on its
    capital. As Shaikh puts it: "Ideology and [Canadian] foreign policy
    are two powerful ingredients."

    http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ottawa-shooting-in-the-shadow-of-the-toronto-18/

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