Canadian MPs this week criticized their nation's counterterrorism agency for failing to nab an Algerian refugee later convicted of plotting a terrorist attack in the US.
The head of the force defended his staff last week over their failure to capture Ahmed Ressam, saying police suspected he was in Canada but did not know he was plotting a bomb attack, according to the National Post.
During parliamentary committee hearings in Ottawa examining the threats to Canada's national security, Tommy Banks, a Liberal Senator, asked the officer pointedly: "Why didn't we catch Mr. Ressam?
"He was a person of whom you had knowledge, who security people had been watching and here he is driving around our country with a bomb in his car. And he's caught by the Americans. Is that OK or did we slip up?"
Superintendent J. Wayne Pilgrim, the officer in charge of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)'s national security investigations branch, responded that Ressam was active in Montreal "and we're talking about a large population base, many places to conduct business undetected.
"There is some evidence that the authorities were aware of his presence in Canada, but obviously from the chain of events there was no evidence to indicate what his particular plans were at that particular time.
"We're fortunate that he was apprehended by the American authorities crossing into the US," Pilgrim said.
Ressam, a refugee claimant from Algeria, was driving into Washington state from British Columbia on December 14, 1999, when US customs agents found a large bomb hidden in the spare tire compartment of his rented car.
He has recently admitted he was heading for Los Angeles airport, where he planned to detonate the bomb he had built in a Vancouver motel room using techniques he learned at an Islamic terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
According to the National Post, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had been watching Ressam since July 1996, and warned the RCMP and US authorities in 1998 that he had gone to Afghanistan for military training.
But after being instructed by members of the Osama bin Laden network, Ressam returned to Canada undetected in 1999, using a Canadian passport he had obtained fraudulently from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
CSIS said it later received information that Ressam had possibly returned to Canada but he was never found. He spent months preparing for the attack, shopping in Quebec and British Columbia for electrical components and explosives.
He was convicted of terrorism on April 6 by a Los Angeles jury and is to be sentenced on July 24 – Albawaba.com
Senator Banks pressed the RCMP officer to explain how Ressam managed to elude police and asked whether "we catch people like that. Are we doing OK, are we looking sometimes like fools? ... Are we happy with that situation?"
Supt. Pilgrim said he was not pleased to learn that terrorists were plotting attacks in Canada but said the country was not a safe haven and procedures were in place to deal with similar incidents.
He said several other suspected terrorists had been identified by CSIS and the RCMP and the force was involved in arresting them, disrupting their activities and assisting with their deportation.
In a prepared presentation to the Standing Senate Committee on Defence and Security, Supt. Pilgrim said terrorists are using Canada as a fundraising base and staging ground for attacks abroad. Organized street gangs have been providing money to extremists, he said.
RCMP intelligence reports say Tamil gangs and Middle Eastern organized crime groups have been funding the Tamil Tigers, Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist movements.
"We are cognizant that funding is the lifeblood of terrorism," Supt. Pilgrim said.
Most terrorist fundraising is "conducted via legal means" so police are not involved, he said. Unlike Britain and the United States, Canada does not have a law banning fundraising for terrorism.
This month, Ressam acknowledged he knew many would die if he had carried out his plan to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, although he wanted to keep civilian casualties low.
Ressam was testifying at the trial of Mokhtar Haouari, the fellow Algerian and former Montreal resident accused of being his accomplice in the 1999 plot to bomb U.S. targets around the turn of the millennium.
Wearing a blue prison tunic and appearing calm, Ressam told the packed New York courtroom he decided in August, 1999, to make a U.S. airport his target.
"An airport is sensitive politically and economically," he said.
Ressam said he wanted to bomb Los Angeles International Airport because he passed through there on his way to Canada and had some idea of its layout, he said, adding he wanted to carry out the bombing before the end of 1999.
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
