Foiled again

The Globe and Mail has obtained RCMP documents saying twelve terrorist plots have ben disrupted in the past two years:

The RCMP has quietly broken up at least a dozen terrorist groups in the past two years, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.

"We have completed 12 disruptions of national-level terrorist groups across the country," the Mounties say in briefing notes prepared for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

Disruptive tactics -- sometimes as simple as letting targets know they are under close surveillance -- are used to prevent a terrorist attack when the police do not have enough evidence to lay criminal charges, the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service say.

Unlike the high-profile arrests and court proceedings resulting from the weekend roundup of terrorist suspects in Southern Ontario, the public rarely learns about these operations, federal security officials say.

[...]

Disruptive tactics can take many forms, including interdiction of persons or matériel at border points, denial of charitable status to front groups, deportation of non-citizens on security grounds, or "defensive actions as a result of threat assessment," CSIS spokeswoman Barbara Campion said. CSIS, the RCMP and other agencies "have a duty to prevent and disrupt terrorist acts . . . before these individuals have the opportunity to carry out their terrorist plans."

Use of disruptive tactics in anti-terrorism cases represents a sea change in the way the RCMP deals with security threats, senior Mounties say. Police officers by inclination and training try to collect evidence that can be used to support a criminal charge and prosecution. But officers are now recognizing that disrupting a plot in its early stages can be a bigger success than making arrests, often after crimes have already been committed.

Disruptive tactics fell out of favour with the RCMP as a result of Mountie security-service scandals in the 1970s. Mounties then sometimes broke the law to disrupt groups, such as the now infamous case of the burning of a barn in rural Quebec to prevent the building from being used as a meeting place by Quebec separatists and the U.S. Black Panthers.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at June 7, 2006 11:42 AM