Fourth arrest in alleged terrorist plot, RCMP confirms

A fourth suspect is now in custody in connection with a year-long terror investigation that has already led to charges against three Canadian men in Ottawa, RCMP confirmed Friday.

A man was the fourth to be arrested, early reports indicated, as authorities executed a search warrant in Ottawa. But no charges have been laid in the arrest.

"Additional investigative work will continue in the coming days," the RCMP said in a statement released Friday afternoon.

There is no word on whether the person is one of three additional conspirators who are still being sought by police.

Court appearance for third suspect

Earlier Friday, Dr. Khurram Syed Sher, of London, Ont., was charged with conspiracy to facilitate terrorist activity in the case where police alleged 50 seized circuit boards were going to be used to remotely detonated bombs.

He appeared in court briefly on Friday, sitting next to his lawyer, Anser Farooq. The justice ordered Sher to return Sept. 1 via video link.

Following his client's appearance, Farooq said Sher had just been flown to Ottawa on an RCMP plane and was anxious to return to his family.

"He's okay. I mean, he's just been brought over, separated from his family," Farooq told reporters.

"We're hoping to address the main concern, which is getting into the court and hear the concerns the Crown has, and get him back to his family as soon as possible."

The court appearance is a long way from his bizarre appearance on Canadian Idol two years. Speaking with a Pakistani accent, he told judges he came to Canada from Pakistan a few years before.

However, the McGill medical school graduate was born in Montreal and has no accent. Friends say he went on the program as a joke.

"Friends say he's a fun-loving, hockey-loving guy who they can't believe had been accused of being a terrorist," CTV's Roger Smith reported from Ottawa Friday.

Sher was an anatomical pathologist at St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital in St. Thomas, Ont., just south of London.

CTV Montreal's Rob Lurie reported that Sher is listed in a Quebec business directory as a director of a group called RS Foundation, which raises money for aid in Pakistan.

RS Foundation spokesperson Arssal Shahabuddin said the organization is legitimate and its members are shocked that Sher has been linked to such allegations.

"I am as shocked as anybody else is, but it's very early, we don't have all the details, I'm shocked and we'll see what happens," Shahabuddin told CTV Montreal by telephone.

Investigation reveals details of alleged terror group

Police revealed Thursday that "Project Samossa" had prompted the arrests of Ottawa residents Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh and Misbahuddin Ahmed, along with Sher.

Police allege all three were part of a homegrown terror group that "posed a real and serious threat to the citizens of the National Capital Region and Canada's national security," RCMP Chief Supt. Serge Therriault said Thursday, when describing the lengthy investigation that led to the arrests.

In court, they have been formally accused of plotting with three others to "knowingly facilitate terrorist activities" on Canadian soil and elsewhere. The charges laid against them say their conspiracy was carried out in Ottawa, Iran, Afghanistan, Dubai and Pakistan.

While keeping a relatively tight lid on the details of the still-developing case, the Mounties said they had seized electronic circuit boards that could have been used to make bomb detonators, as well as apparent terrorist literature.

Police suspect an attack was at least months away but they made the arrests because they thought the suspects were about to start sending funds to terrorists in Afghanistan.

Suspects with education, opportunity

Early reports have revealed Ahmed and Sher had professional jobs in health care at the time of their respective arrests, while Alizadeh had previously studied electrical engineering technology and English as an additional language at Winnipeg's Red River College.

While some have been shocked that educated Canadians with seemingly bright futures could have alleged involvement in terrorist activities, former CSIS agent Michel Juneau-Katsuya said their backgrounds are not surprising.

"Unfortunately, this is sort of a textbook copy of the profile that usually we would expect," Juneau-Katsuya told CTV's Canada AM during a telephone interview from Ottawa on Friday morning.

"We're talking about born and raised kids that grew up in this society," Juneau-Katsuya said, pointing out that the background of the three arrested men that is contrary to a perception that terror suspects are likely to be poor or disenfranchised and foreign born.

Author and Muslim Canadian Congress board member Raheel Raza told CTV News Channel that "it's no longer the socially unempowered or the people dying in poverty who are the radicals, but it is educated people. Because they have the minds and the sense and the genius to plan such grotesque events."

Terrorism expert Alan Bell said that Canadians who become involved in terror are far more difficult to detect than their foreign counterparts.

"For a terrorist to come to Canada and try to perpetrate an attack is very difficult," Bell told CTV's Canada AM during an interview in Toronto on Friday morning.

But when Canadians can quietly be radicalized, the threat becomes much more dangerous.

"They are operating underneath the radar, doing everyday jobs, and now all of a sudden they get arrested and that's the first time everyone knows about it," said Bell.

Canadian targets

The recent arrests of the terror suspects have also refocused public attention on the fact that Canada "is certainly not immune to potential attacks," as Raymond Boisvert, the assistant director of CSIS, said Thursday.

Bell said that Canada's open society makes it a target for terrorist attacks, as does the country's involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

"We're one of the very few countries that embarked on the war against terrorism years ago, but has not been attacked yet," he said.

While authorities have declined to provide specifics, there has been speculation that the some of Ottawa's more well-known landmarks may have been among the alleged targets, said Juneau-Katsuya.

"There is more and more speculation that one of the prime targets that they were going for was definitely the Parliament Hill," he said, echoing other sources that have made the same suggestion about the group's alleged targets.

With files from The Canadian Press