By NNN-PTI,
Toronto : The Pakistani militant outfit that New Delhi blames for training the gunmen behind last week’s Mumbai massacre has been linked to recent terrorist plots in several Western countries including Canada.
Lashkar-e-Taiba runs training camps near the Indo-Pak border and its followers have been accused of planning attacks in Toronto, Britain, Australia and the United States, National Post reported yesterday.
At least five suspects associated with the ‘Toronto 18’ — described by police as a homegrown extremist group accused of plotting attack on Parliament Hill in 2006 in Ottawa and detonate truck bombs near the CN Tower in Toronto — allegedly travelled to Pakistan to train at Lashkar camps, newspaper reported.
Aabid Khan, a British man convicted of terrorism-related charges in London last summer, had hoped to use Toronto as a staging area for sending recruits to Pakistan for “commando training” with Lashkar and another militant group called Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Canada placed the Lashkar-e-Taiba on its list of outlawed terrorist groups in 2003. The government renewed the listing last week following a review.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, the “Army of the Pure,” is one of Pakistan’s most powerful militant groups.