Mounties: More May Be Held in Terror Probe

Items seized by police are shown on display during a press conference in Toronto, Saturday, June 3, 2006. Canadian authorities said Saturday they had foiled plans for terrorist attacks in southern Ontario with the arrests of people who were "inspired by al-Qaida." On Friday, June 2, 2006, members of the RCMP and partners of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team arrested 12 individuals and charged them under Section 83 of the Criminal Code of Canada. (AP Photo/Canadian Press, Aaron Harris) (Aaron Harris - AP)

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario -- Canadian authorities investigating an alleged homegrown plot to blow up buildings in Ontario said Monday more arrests were possible as part of a wider probe into terrorist cells in at least seven countries, including the United States.

The Toronto Star, citing a U.S. counterterrorism official it did not name, said investigators were combing through evidence seized during Saturday's raids looking for connections between the 17 arrested suspects and at least 18 other Islamic militants detained in the United States, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Britain, Denmark and Sweden.

"This investigation is not finished," Royal Canadian Mounted Police assistant commissioner Mike McDonell told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Monday. "Anybody that aided, facilitated or participated in this terrorist event will be arrested and prosecuted in court."

In an interview with National Public Radio, McDonell said the probe had expanded beyond Canada.

"We are working with and sharing our information with our allied countries," he said.

The arrests were made Friday and Saturday after the group acquired three tons of ammonium nitrate from undercover Mounties in a sting operation, the Toronto Star has reported. The fertilizer can be mixed with fuel oil or other ingredients to make a bomb.

That is three times the amount of fertilizer used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, McDonell said. The bombing of the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killed 168 people and injured more than 800.

"For various reasons, they appeared to have become adherents of a violent ideology inspired by al-Qaida," Luc Portelance, the assistant director of operations with CSIS _ Canada's spy agency, said Saturday.

Officials said the operation involved some 400 intelligence and law-enforcement officers and was the largest counterterrorism operation in Canada since the nation's Anti-Terrorism Act was adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Star reported that the investigation began in 2004 with the monitoring of Internet chat rooms.

"We've been investigating them for some while and it got to the point where we could no longer control the risk," McDonell told NPR on Monday.

A prayer leader at a storefront mosque west of Toronto said several suspects prayed daily there but never spoke of hurting others.

"I will say that they were steadfast, religious people. There's no doubt about it. But here we always preach peace and moderation," Qamrul Khanson, an imam at the one-room Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, said Sunday.