There are some serious allegations of a terrorism plot coming out of Canada. And if what authorities are saying is true, it would all have started with two men smuggling guns out of the United States.
Border guards in August caught two Muslim men trying to cross the Peace Bridge from Buffalo, N.Y., with the guns – two loaded .38s and a 9 mm – duct-taped to their bodies.
Officials at first thought they had cracked a routine gun-running scheme: smugglers buying cheap weapons in the United States to sell on the black market in Canada.
But when they discovered who had rented the white Buick the smugglers were driving – a radical young Muslim from suburban Toronto – they suspected something more sinister, Toronto’s Globe and Mail reported.
Nine months later, the Canadian investigation had grown into a worldwide terror probe called Project OSage.
It culminated last week with charges against 17 men and boys, the largest terrorism sweep ever in Canada.
Among those indicted were the two men caught with the Ohio guns – Mohammed Dirie, 22, and Yasin Abdi Mohamed, 24 – and Fahim Ahmad, 21, the man who rented the Buick.
What lured Dirie and Mohamed to Ohio is unclear.
According to media reports in Canada, both men claimed they wanted the guns for protection after a friend was robbed. They said they had bought the weapons from a “drug addict” who approached them in Columbus.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, in a long-standing cooperative arrangement with Canadian officials, traced the weapons to Columbus, ATF agent Patrick Berarducci said Thursday.
It turned out the guns figured in an ongoing ATF investigation of firearms trafficking that had begun before the men were stopped at the border. Beraducci declined to elaborate, explaining that details could jeopardize the ongoing firearms investigation, which is based in Columbus. Both Dirie and Mohamed had pleaded guilty last year to weapons smuggling and are serving two-year prison terms in Canada. But new charges filed last week – smuggling the weapons for terror purposes – could yield much longer sentences.
Criminals know they can get weapons in the United States. Thanks to the NRA’s loose policies, criminals from all over the world depend on the United States and its weapons trade for the tools they need to commit violence. And so when Mohammed and Yasin needed guns to carry out their terror plot, they came to Columbus, Ohio.
Theirs is not the only U.S. connection to the Canada case. The FBI was also involved, dubbing its role in the probe Operation Northern Exposure, according to Canada’s National Post.
In March, a Georgia Tech student was indicted on charges of giving material support of terrorism and another Atlanta-area man was arrested in Bangladesh on terror charges.
According to court records, Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 23, hopped a Greyhound bus to Toronto on March 6, 2005, and spent a week with at least three of those charged in the Canada terror case.
The men developed a plan to train in terror camps in Pakistan, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. The group also discussed strategic locations in the United States for a terrorist strike, including oil refineries and military bases, the FBI agent said.
Wonder if they planned to use a .50 caliber rifle, freely available in the United States, to attack those bases?
The point is that our gun problem doesn’t stop at our borders. Because guns are so freely available in Pennsylvania, they turn up used in crimes in New York City. And because they’re so freely available in the United States, they’re used to kill human beings around the world. What we need are stronger gun laws in place, so that weapons don’t ever reach the hands of men like these.
