TORONTO - The RCMP is probing an online news report that says a group of Canadian militants is training for jihad in Pakistani al-Qaida camps.
Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online cites "well-placed Taliban sources" saying the terrorist group is training a number of Western Caucasians -- Canadians in particular-- for attacks in Canada.
Assistant RCMP commissioner Gilles Michaud told the Canadian Press Friday that the Mounties and their security and intelligence partners were assessing the information in the report for its "credibility and reliability."
Michaud said the RCMP would take "appropriate action" according to the results of that assessment, which he added was being carried out as quickly as possible.
In the report, a militant from Pakistan's North Waziristan region claims 12 Canadians went to Afghanistan last February and received basic jihadi training.
Arif Wazir says the Canadians were sent to Pakistan in November for "special courses" that included the use of sophisticated weapons and how to connect with local smuggling networks in North America.
The Asia Times report goes on to quote Wazir saying the Canadians will eventually return home to execute al-Qaida's plan to target Canada's big cities.
The article says the Canadians joined an Egyptian militant organization, Jihad al-Islami, which helped them get to Afghanistan in the first place.
The report also carries purported names of some of the alleged Canadians, but the Globe and Mail says that no Canadians with those names are known to be missing or sought by police.
The report adds that other Westerners from the U.S., Britain and Germany, are also being trained for jihad in North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan.
The report was written by the site's Pakistan bureau chief, Syed Saleem Shahzad, and a tribal affairs special correspondent Tahir Ali.
Shahzad is also the author of an upcoming book called "Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban 9/11 and Beyond.
In early October western officials said they were investigating a terror plot to carry out Mumbai-style shooting rampages or other attacks in Britain, France and Germany.
A Pakistani intelligence official said a number of Germans and British militants were involved, but the warnings of possible imminent attacks proved a false alarm.
A spokeswoman for Germany's Federal Criminal Police office said in October there was "concrete evidence" that 70 German citizens had undergone terror training in Pakistan's lawless border region and that about a third of the militants had returned to Germany.
Rolf Tophoven, director of the Germany-based Institute for Terrorism Research and Security Policy, recently said he had seen estimates that "between 30 and 40 hardcore terrorists" from Germany are currently in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
A report released in October by George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute and the Swedish National Defence College's Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies warned that radicalized Westerners who easily travel around the world represent a growing terrorism threat.
And the report urged the U.S. and its European allies to work together to confront this new threat.
