The protest was called by the Canadian Muslim Congress. Abdul Rahman Malik, one of the organizers, said, “We cannot let this story go off the radar because they’ll arrest 19 today, 20 the next day, and 100 after that. This isn’t a Pakistani issue, a Punjabi issue, a Muslim issue. This is a civil liberties issue, this is a democracy issue.” Further protests are planned, including a public meeting on September 21.

Cops from the Toronto police force, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) carried out the pre-dawn raids. On August 29, police arrested a 20th person. Another surrendered to immigration officials September 2 after learning there was a warrant out for his arrest.

One of the 21 was later ordered released after an immigration adjudicator ruled there was no evidence to justify detaining him without charges. Two others have been granted bail.

Save for one—an Indian man—all those arrested were from Pakistan. None has been charged with any crime. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act gives the federal government the power to detain indefinitely any foreign national deemed to be a threat to “national security.”

The CBC reported that “the arrests followed a seven-month investigation called Project Thread” involving the RCMP-directed Public Security and Anti-Terrorism unit (PSAT). Project Thread targets people with alleged ties to “terrorist” activities. A total of 31 people are named in Project Thread documents, raising the specter of further arrests.

The lawyer for Dennis Coderre, the minister of citizenship and immigration, told the press August 26, “I guess the easiest way of putting it is there is a suggestion they might in fact be perhaps a sleeper cell for Al Qaeda.”

In an August 26 opinion piece entitled, “Slender threads tie 19 to terror,” Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom wrote that officials based the arrests on PSAT claims that the arrestees lived with other male students and had a “minimal standard of living”; that most were studying in “a dilatory manner”; that some were acquainted with two people who once tried to go for a walk on the beach by the Pickering nuclear power plant, located near Toronto; and that some knew construction workers with access to gauges that could be used to make a “dirty” nuclear device. Walkom pointed out that such gauges are perfectly legal.

The document produced by PSAT, entitled “Reasons for detention,” referred to the national origin of 18 of the men as a factor in the arrests. “The Punjab province in Pakistan…is noted for Sunni extremism,” it stated. It claimed that the detained men are connected by the Ottawa Business School, which it describes as “not a legitimate school.”

The sole Indian citizen among the detainees, the PSAT snoops said, “is currently enrolled in flight school…. His flight plan for training purposes took him over the Pickering Nuclear Power Plant.” A flight instructor at the school denied the claim, along with another PSAT allegation that the student was taking an unusually long time to finish the course.

Government officials also say that some of the men had fraudulent immigration documents, although no charges have resulted. The RCMP claims to be sifting through “vanloads of evidence.” Meanwhile, the detained men are supposed to have a review hearing within 30 days of their arrests.

Three days before the Toronto protest a demonstration was held in Ottawa to demand the release of five men held without charges for periods of up to several years. The participants delivered a petition with 4,500 signatures demanding the release of the five.  
 
 
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