Canada was on Osama bin Laden’s hit list: intelligence report

Stewart Bell | Jan 6, 2013 11:13 PM ET
More from Stewart Bell | @StewartBellNP

The Associated Press FIles A report by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre is the first official government confirmation that the cache of papers recovered during the operation that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden named Canada as a target.

 

Canada was on a list of terrorist targets found by U.S. Navy SEALs during the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, according to a newly declassified intelligence report.

The report by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre is the first official government confirmation that the cache of papers recovered during the operation that killed the al-Qaeda leader named Canada as a target.

“Canada’s international profile as a potential terrorist target has been confirmed through an analysis of files captured during the 2011 05 02 raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound.

Canada is specifically named in the files, along with the U.S., Britain, Israel, Germany and Spain, as targets for terror strikes

“Canada is specifically named in the files, along with the U.S., Britain, Israel, Germany and Spain, as targets for terror strikes,” reads the report, obtained by the National Post under the Access to Information Act.

Bin Laden was shot dead 20 months ago when a Special Forces team crossed from Afghanistan in helicopters and stormed his walled compound. The manhunt has been dramatized in a Hollywood film to be released this week, Zero Dark Thirty.
During the nighttime operation, U.S. forces seized bin Laden’s computers and papers.
 

A handful of the more than 6,000 documents were publicly released last year but they concerned al-Qaeda’s strategic direction and internal dynamics rather than targeting.

But the April 2012 threat assessment, released by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, confirms Canada was on a list of targets found during the raid. The report does not say bin Laden had developed any specific plans to attack Canada.

Ray Boisvert, a retired CSIS counter-terrorism executive, said Sunday that bin Laden’s “strategizing” did not mean he was masterminding a 9/11-style attack in Canada. He said bin Laden was isolated in his final years and his influence was on the wane.

“So his writings or verbal commentary via couriers was likely limited to influencing and shaping future plans and opportunities to strike against the West,” said Mr. Boisvert, now president of the consulting firm I-SEC Integrated Strategies.

Farooq Naeem / AFP/Getty Images   Pakistani photographer Mazhar Khan shows a portrait he took of Osama bin Laden to a colleague as he displays his photographs of bin Laden taken in Afghanistan.

 

He said al-Qaeda attack planners would have been made aware of bin Laden’s priorities. “This would have provided some general themes for target prioritization. However, targeting of Canada and Canadians would have, and will continue to occur, based on emerging opportunities and any perceived weaknesses in Canada’s counter-terrorism defences,” Mr. Boisvert said.

ITAC, which wrote the report, is based at CSIS headquarters in Ottawa and is made up of representatives of the intelligence service, RCMP, military, foreign affairs, Ontario and Quebec police and other agencies. It monitors threats to Canada’s security.

Bin Laden had previously threatened Canada, and al-Qaeda propaganda has periodically called for attacks on the country. Canadian counter-terrorism agencies have disrupted several plots, including planned truck bombings in Toronto, but none has been successful.

Mr. Boisvert said he believes Canada remains one of the top five targets of al-Qaeda-inspired extremists. The report also stresses that Canada’s main security threat comes from followers of the al-Qaeda ideology, including converts to radical Islam.

Canada remains a viable target of Islamist terrorism mainly because of its participation in Western military and political alliances

“Canada remains a viable target of Islamist terrorism mainly because of its participation in Western military and political alliances, its involvement in coalition forces in Afghanistan, its support for Israel and the United States, and geographic proximity to the latter,” the report says.

Although al-Qaeda is known for orchestrating high-profile mass casualty bombings, the report said terrorist commanders in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region are no longer the “primary drivers” behind anti-Western plots.

“The threat against the West has diversified as the global jihad is increasingly being driven by violent homegrown extremists and AQ affiliates. Recent jihadist messaging and attack plotting indicate a move away from complex plots or, at a minimum, augmenting these plots with smaller-scale attacks against a broader range of targets.”

Thirty-six Canadian civilians have died in terrorist attacks since 2001, most recently in 2011 when a Montreal couple was killed in a suicide bombing at a tourist café in Marrakech, Morocco, according to the report. In addition, 158 Canadian military personnel “have been killed by terrorists or while combating terrorism.”

In the fall of 2001, after the Taliban was overthrown by U.S.-backed Afghan forces, bin Laden fled to Pakistan and eventually settled in a large compound in Abbottabad, a garrison town not far from Islamabad.

A Pakistani judicial commission set up 18 months ago to investigate how bin Laden was able to live in the country for so long submitted its report to the government last week but it has not been made public and may never be.

National Post