Just ahead of visits to the region from the leaders of the G-8 and G-20 nations, RCMP in southern Ontario are looking for the buyer of an undocumented trailer load of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.
The RCMP-led Integrated National Security Enforcement Team in Ontario (O-INSET) on Wednesday took over the lead in the investigation of a cash purchase of a large amount of ammonium nitrate by an as-yet-unidentified lone male at a Niagara-area ag supply store.
According to RCMP and Niagara Regional Police, at between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. on May 26, a man bought a “large quantity” of ammonium nitrate at the Vineland Growers Co-op outlet at Jordan Station, about 30 km northwest of Niagara Falls.
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“The supplier believed at the time that the subject was making the purchase on behalf of a regular customer who is known to the vendors,” RCMP said. “This was subsequently found not to be the case.”
The buyer paid cash and “no identification was obtained,” RCMP said. The buyer was described as a stocky, short (5’6″ to 5’8″) white male in his late 50s or early 60s, with severed fingers on his right hand, brown hair, brown eyes, a broad mouth and irregular teeth, possibly a slight limp and an “acute accent (possibly Mediterranean).”
The fertilizer was then loaded on a manufactured and “well-used single-axle trailer with a little rust” behind a red- or maroon-coloured minivan, RCMP said. No license plate number was recorded.
In short, the buyer “was not properly identified and investigators are now seeking the assistance of the general public to identify the individual,” RCMP said.
Security threats
Provinces’ INSET teams are made up of representatives of the RCMP, federal agencies such as Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and provincial and municipal police services, with a mandate to investigate “all national security threats.”
The “security threat” in this case stems from ammonium nitrate’s known use in improvised explosives. The federal government in June 2008 added new regulations on the sale of the product for that reason.
Anyone who sells ammonium nitrate must now be registered with the explosives regulatory division of Natural Resources Canada. The product’s resale is also prohibited.
Sellers are also required to comply with security measures for storage, record-keeping and customer identification, the government said at the time.
The RCMP’s last such major investigation took place shortly before the opening of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, when two tonnes of ammonium nitrate allegedly went unaccounted for at a West Coast bulk chemical terminal.
An “exhaustive” police audit followed at offices in B.C., Edmonton, Calgary and Salt Lake City and found the discrepancy in fertilizer stocks at Kinder Morgan’s facilities existed only on paper.
Among the most infamous fertilizer-bomb attacks was the destruction of a U.S. federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, in which domestic attackers detonated a combination of ammonium nitrate and motor fuel and killed over 150 people.
UPDATE, June 9: Niagara Regional Police reported late Wednesday afternoon that the purchaser of the ammonium nitrate contacted O-INSET. The fertilizer has now been recovered from two addresses in Toronto, and police have found “no suspicious circumstances” in its purchase. “It is expected that there will be no charges,” police said Wednesday.
