Canada's spies can't find many terror suspects

OTTAWA - Canada's spy service admitted today it couldn't track down many domestic terror suspects and said the country faced an increasing threat from "home-grown terrorists" who are assimilated into society.

The frank comments by a senior official at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) underscore the problems facing the country's counter-terrorism operatives in the wake of the Sept 11 suicide attacks in New York.

Jack Hooper, deputy director of operations at CSIS, said the service was trying to keep track of "350 high-level targets" as well as 50 to 60 organisations thought to be linked to groups such as al Qaeda.

"We know who and where some of them are," he told the Senate's national defence committee.

Both the current and previous directors of the CSIS have said over the last two years that an attack by militants inside Canada is inevitable.

Hooper, who complained about a lack of funding, said the overall number of targets CSIS was tracking had not changed since 1998.

"Since 1998 ... we have cut back considerably in a number of investigative fields. We've reduced the number of individual and organisational targets and yet the target numbers themselves have remained static," he said.

"So we've effectively augmented our target base in a number of particularly terrorist domains. I am concerned that ... maybe we operate at top operational capacity and we've reached that and that critical capacity hasn't really been enhanced over the years." In recent years, al Qaeda has twice specifically threatened to strike against Canada.

"We stay up at night worrying about the threats we don't know about. We always used to work on the basis ... that for every one we knew (about), there were probably 10 we didn't," said Hooper. "I worry that the ratio is increased. I think there may be more unknowns now there than ever." Hooper said CSIS was increasingly concerned by what it called the emergence of "home-grown terrorists" -- young Canadians from immigrant backgrounds.

"They are virtually indistinguishable from other youth. They blend in very well to our society, they speak our language and they appear to be -- to all intents and purposes -- well-assimilated ... (they) look to Canada to execute their targeting," he said.

Hooper drew parallels to last year's London bombings, where four young British men from immigrant families set off bombs in the transit system which killed 52 people and wounded 700.

"I can tell you that all of the circumstances that led to the London transit bombings, to take one example, are resident here now in Canada," Hooper said.

Because home-grown suspects were Canadian, they could not be deported, Hooper told the committee.

"We have two remedies -- we can work in collaboration with law enforcement to see them prosecuted or we can work to disrupt their activities," said Hooper, who declined to answer reporters' questions afterward.

The Senate committee was examining the possible ramifications of Canada's military mission to Afghanistan, which Canada wants to extend for two years to 2009.

Hooper said there could be a risk of veterans of the fighting coming to Canada and launching terror attacks.

CSIS staff could only investigate about 10 per cent of the 20,000 immigrants who have come to Canada from Pakistan and Afghanistan over the last five years.

"That may be inadequate," said Hooper.

- REUTERS