Suspects seem strictly second-rate

If these guys are terrorists, they aren't very good ones. At least that seems to be the picture that is slowly emerging of the 17 men and boys charged this week under Canada's anti-terror laws.






Their so-called training camp turns out to have been a swath of bush near Washago, where their activities — shooting off firearms and playing paintball — were so obvious and so irritating that local residents immediately called police.

Serious terrorists, like Osama bin Laden, base their operations in remote areas where no one will bother them. These suspects, it is alleged, simply trespassed on someone's farm and, when the owner told them to leave, gave him lip. Serious terrorists, like the 19 who attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, try to avoid making waves. They try to blend in.

The young men charged this week apparently didn't bother with this kind of tradecraft. They apparently didn't realize, or perhaps didn't care, that large groups of brown-skinned urbanites dressed in camouflage are not a common sight in rural central Ontario.

So when local resident Mike Côté came upon a group of just such men near his Ramara Township farm last December, he immediately informed police.

As he told the Star this week, the group appeared cold, wet and bedraggled. Some had fallen though the thin ice into a marsh. The leader of these alleged terrorists was so disgusted with his young charges that he complained to Côté about their incompetence.

These, apparently, were the conspirators. One, a former army reservist, allegedly wanted to cut off Prime Minister Stephen Harper's head. How would he find it?

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