Generation jihad

This is huge: Twelve adults, five teenagers, all of them homegrown, allegedly plotting a "series" of attacks on Canadian soil. Police say they had three tons of ammonium nitrate -- three times the amount used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
UPDATE: Classic police presser, Canadian style. "Thankyou all for coming. Allow me to introduce everyone on the podium. No, we can't answer any of your questions."
UPPERDATE: The suspects -- those that can be named.
Fahim Ahmad, 21, Toronto;
Zakaria Amara, 20, Mississauga, Ont.;
Asad Ansari, 21, Mississauga;
Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Mississauga;
Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mississauga;
Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ont.;
Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston;
Jahmaal James, 23, Toronto;
Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Toronto;
Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur 25, Toronto;
Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, Mississauga;
Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue, Mississauga.
Anyone go to school with any of these guys? UPPESTDATE: Just how homegrown were these jihadi?

They travelled north to a "training camp" and made propaganda videos imitating jihadists who had battled in Afghanistan. At night, they washed up at a Tim Hortons nearby.

More nuggets, from the Star's Michelle Shephard: * The accused in the present case have ties to the recent case of two Georgia men who came north to meet with "like-minded Islamic extremists" (want ad: "Islamic extremist seeks others of like mind for fun and mayhem") in Toronto:

Four months after authorities began to fear that Canada might have its own homegrown terrorist cell, two Americans entered the picture. Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi descent who had attended high school in Ontario, and Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, a student at Georgia Tech, boarded a Greyhound bus in Atlanta on March 6, 2005, and travelled to Toronto to meet "like-minded Islamic extremists," a U.S. court document alleges. At the time the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force was watching the U.S. pair, Sadequee, according to court documents, was already on a no-fly list. But they crossed the border uneventfully and met three people associated with the group the Canadian authorities were watching. Ahmed later told authorities that the meetings were to discuss U.S. locations suitable for a terrorist strike, including oil refineries and military bases, court documents state. They also allegedly talked about how to dismantle the Global Positioning System in an effort to disrupt military and commercial communications and traffic, and their plans to go to Pakistan to train at "terrorist-sponsored camps." (The FBI claims Ahmed "later travelled to Pakistan in an attempt to receive just such training.")

* They are thought to have been plotting to blow up the CSIS headquarters on Front St., among other targets:

Many of the agents were known to members of the group only by aliases, but the belief that the office had been targeted led to months of unease among CSIS staff, sources said. Some of the group's members had even been spotted taking notes around the building, and at least one had reportedly visited the basement, one source told the Star.

* The present group has been the subject of a joint RCMP-CSIS investigation since November, 2004. By February of this year, they were viewed as "Canada's greatest terrorist threat." UPPESTDATER: CP has more on the Georgia connection:

An FBI affidavit alleges Amercians Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, both from the Atlanta region, travelled to Toronto in March 2005, meeting with others of interest to U.S. authorities. The men supposedly discussed terrorist training and bomb plots against military facilities and oil refineries. FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said Saturday there are apparent links between the two American visitors and the police sweep in Canada. "There is preliminary indication that some of the Canadian subjects may have had limited contact with the two people recently arrested from Georgia," Kolko said in a statement.