Angry in the Great White North

The story of the three letter bombs delivered in Toronto and Guelph, the identification of a suspect, and the safe and dramatic controlled detonation of the three more explosive devices allegedly found in the suspect's car has dominated the news in southern Ontario:

Police, who have one man under arrest, are investigating the manufacture of at least six explosive devices – three sent to unwitting recipients here and in Guelph during the past several weeks, and three found in the trunk of a rental car stopped Thursday night at an Esso station at Overlea Blvd. and Thorncliffe Park Dr. in Don Mills.

"We don't have a motive at this point," Toronto police Const. Wendy Drummond said. "We do know that the three victims – the two in Toronto and the one in Guelph – were not chosen at random."

The suspect, Adel Mohamed Arnaout of 176 Ashdale Ave, has been charged with three counts of attempted murder, three of intending to cause an explosion, one of criminal harassment, and one of posession of explosive material.

Some of the focus is on the strange bungalow on Ashdale Ave where Arnaout rented a room:

"That's definitely a strange house," said Ashley Hinds, who lives nearby.

"Most of the residents have a nickname for it, `Bombay Bunker.' It wasn't because of the families, it was because of the brick extensions and the double steel doors in the front, the tiny peep windows with mesh lining.

"Everyone thought something unusual was always happening there, because people came and went all the time. The illegal extensions were reported to authorities, but nothing was done."

Neighbour Sue Hammond said the house, with two gaping open windows and surrounded by construction debris, "was conspicuous because of the way that the front was built.

"When the doors are shut and the gates are shut, it looks like a fortress compared to the homes around it."

Karrie Peterbaugh, another neighbour, said "There were so many people in and out of that place, it was really hard to keep track.

It was also difficult to keep track of the construction that always seemed to be going on, she added. "It started out as a small little shack. They kept on adding and saying it was for family, and the next thing it was a rental unit."

The targets:

• Abdelmagid Radi of Toronto, unknown (full name literally means "satisfied servant of the most glorious"...cool)
• Terrence Reiber of Toronto, real estate lawyer
• John Becker of Guelph, building contractor
• Steven Scott of Toronto, unknown

Steven Scott enters the story in June when he filed a complaint about harassment, and that investigation started a file on Arnaout, though no details have been revealed concerning that charge, or how it might be related to the letter bombs sent to Radi, Reiber, and Becker, if indeed those charges are related.

So what do a real estate lawyer, a building contractor, and Mr Radi (who, by the way, is the only person to have suffered injuries as a result of a bomb as the other two packages did not trigger, and is hopefully recovering well) have in common? One wonders if the strange "bunker" on Ashdale has something to do with it. But then Arnaout is not the owner of the rooming house on Ashdale:

Mr. Arnaout's landlord, Mohammad Raja, said the accused man has been living at the property for about three months.

"He told me he was going to look for a security job," Mr. Raja said.

Although Mr. Raja's first impression of Mr. Arnaout was that "he looked like a very poor person," he agreed to rent him a room because Mr. Arnaout provided the requisite first and last month's rent.

Though Becker is a building contractor, nothing has been said about work done at Ashdale. Maybe his trade is a red herring and the link lies elsewhere. Or maybe he received the package by mistake because of his common name. Or maybe he received the package in an elaborate attempt to confuse investigators by introducing a random and utterly unrelated element into the pattern.

OK, that's too clever by half.

As for landlord Mohammad Raja, if he has been enjoying a vacation from official interest in whether his rooming house is up to code, I think it's safe to say that that is over.

Lawyer Terry Reiber won't say if Arnaout was a former client, but it doesn't seem like Arnaout was in a position to make real estate purchases (of course, a change in his financial situation might be part of this story). Though Reiber is described consistently as a real estate lawyer, Terrence Reiber also practices, or once practiced, criminal law:

For an aggressive criminal defence contact Terrence Reiber. He has over 24 years of courtroom experience.

Experience and aggressiveness notwithstanding, Arnaout will be looking elsewhere for counsel to prepare his defence.

Speaking of criminals and defense strategies, police are saying little about Adel Arnaout himself. He is a landed immigrant from Lebanon. There is nothing about him online (which goes for most people). We don't when he came to Canada, or under what terms and conditions.

Now that the dramatics are over, we can hope for information to replace the noise and fury. Unless there is a publication ban, of course.

By the way, we're assuming that the three bombs detonated by Toronto Police constituted the entire remaining inventory of letter bombs. Even police admit there is no way to be sure if more bombs had been delivered before police made the arrest.

Interesting times indeed.

Addendum: We assume that the two failed attempts on Becker and Reiber constitute good luck on their part. Consider the possibility, though, that Radi was the only target, and everything else was just so much fog to confuse the police. The subsequent devices had real explosives but purposely disabled triggering mechanisms (either because of a shred of human decency in the bomber, or more likely the desire to avoid blowing himself up handling a working bomb for no good reason). But the police insist there is a link between the targets and Arnaout, so we'll take their word on it for now.