An accused al-Qaeda sleeper agent arrested in Montreal three months ago was trained in Afghanistan alongside convicted millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, Canada's intelligence agency said yesterday.
A newly released report says Ressam told Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents he met Adil Charkaoui in the summer of 1998 when they trained together at one of Osama bin Laden's camps. At the time, Ressam was training at Khalden Camp with 50 to 100 other radical Muslims.
Among the plots discussed at the camp was a plan to meet in Canada to carry out a major attack against the United States.
Muslim recruits from around the world converged at Khalden Camp in the late 1990s to join bin Laden's holy war against the West.
They were taught how to handle weapons, build bombs, deceive authorities and destroy electrical plants, airports, hotels and corporate buildings.
CSIS claims Mr. Charkaoui was one such recruit.
He was trained and then sent back to Canada to live quietly as a sleeper agent who could be quickly activated to carry out an attack.
And now, the predictable reaction from Muslim groups.
Although Mr. Charkaoui denies ever having gone to Afghanistan, and Islamic lobby groups assert his arrest is part of an "inquisition against Muslims," evidence is mounting to support the CSIS claim that he is a highly trained terrorist operative.
Last month, CSIS said chief al-Qaeda recruiter Abou Zubayda had identified Mr. Charkaoui as a man he knew in Afghanistan as Zubeir Al-Maghrebi. Now the intelligence service says one of Canada's most notorious terrorists has also fingered Mr. Charkaoui. [. . . .]
Following his conviction in April, 2001, Ressam agreed to co-operate with authorities in exchange for a more lenient sentence. A U.S. judge has characterized him as a "startlingly helpful" informant.
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He was arrested on May 21 after Denis Coderre, the Minister of Immigration, and Wayne Easter, the Solicitor-General, signed a certificate declaring him a threat to national security.
Canadian immigration law allows the government to deport non-citizens who are members of terrorist organizations. . . .
