CREDIT: Canadian Press Family members of 15 accused terrorists wait in line to pass through security at a Brampton, Ont., courthouse on Tuesday. June 6, 2006.

CREDIT: Canadian Press A police officer guards the underground enterance to a Brampton, Ont., courthouse on Tuesday. June 6, 2006 as a police van esscorts accused terrorist suspects into the building.

TORONTO - The young men charged with plotting terrorist attacks against Canadian targets were allegedly planning two separate strikes one to detonate a truck bomb to destroy a significant building and the other to open fire on a crowd in a public place, the National Post has learned.

The alleged conspirators were concentrating their efforts on their assigned missions and were in an advanced state of planning when authorities arrested them last weekend.

The national security component of the huge investigation was code-named Operation Claymore by Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's spy agency, which was on specific alert as their office at the base of the CN Tower was among the list of prime targets by the alleged conspirators.

The Toronto Stock Exchange was another of the plotters' prime targets for a massive bomb attack, according to law-enforcement sources.

Both attacks would have devastated Toronto and, if carried out during business hours, would have resulted in significant casualties.

Sources also told the National Post that the commandos of Joint Task Force-2 (JTF-2), Canada's elite special forces unit, were put on standby a short flight away from where suspected terrorists were conducting ''training camps'' at an isolated site north of Toronto.

A ''troop'' of about 25 of the unit's highly trained assaulters, part of JTF-2's counter-terrorism unit, were at a nearby military base with their helicopters ready to swoop down should police decide they were needed, said a military source.

''They were within a few minutes flying time of this training camp,'' said the source, who is familiar with JTF-2's operations. ''Basically they were on standby in case things got out of hand and the police couldn't handle it.''

Police arrested 12 adults and five youths Friday under the federal Anti-terrorism Act for allegedly plotting to bomb targets in southern Ontario. Fifteen of them are to appear in a Brampton, Ont., court today for a bail hearing on a variety of offences.

Security is expected to be intense. For their first appearance on Saturday, more than 30 tactical officers ringed the courthouse, a helicopter hovered overheard, and rooftop snipers and bomb-sniffing dogs watched those being frisked by court officers and Peel Regional Police officers.

Of the 17 people charged, five of them are considered juveniles by the court and little information on the youths is publicly available regarding their charges.

Of the adults, however, court documents suggest that a sub group of six was allegedly involved in the bomb plot. Nine of them are charged with training to carry out a terrorist activity.

A smaller group of four are charged with training or recruiting others into a terrorist plot and three are charged with obtaining firearms.

All of them are charged with participating or contributing to a terrorist group.

The two men, identified by the National Post as the alleged terrorist leaders Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara face the most charges. Ahmad is charged with all six of the terrorism charges.

Ahmad and Amara are joined in being charged with the bomb plot by Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleem, Qayyum Abdul Jamal and Saad Khalid.

Ahmad is also charged with being with Mohammed Dirie and Yasim Abdi Mohamed when they were arrested for gun smuggling at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, Ont. last August 13.

Charged alongside Ahmad and Amara with recruiting or providing training to someone to participate in carrying out a terrorist activity are Amin Mohamed Durrani and Steven Vikash Chand, also known as Abdul Shakur, who converted to Islam from Hinduism.

Lawyers for a number of the accused men complained that the clients' family members were not allowed to see their relatives since their arrest.

"My clients are being denied visits from their family. The family members are being denied access to them. I expected I will be able to get access to my clients after (Tuesday's) appearance," said Anser Farooq, a lawyer for at least three of the accused men.

Police seized firearms, computer hard drives, camouflage clothing, an electronic detonator and three tonnes of ammonium nitrate during the raids.

The RCMP, which had been monitoring the group, switched a load of fertilizer which the conspirators allegedly believed to be 34-0-0 grade fertilizer, the best for making explosives with a benign substance before it was delivered to the suspects.

After the controlled delivery, heavily armed police fanned out throughout the Greater Toronto Area to arrest their targets.

Ahmad and Amara had been followers of Jamal, a senior member of the Ar-Rahman Islamic Centre in Mississauga. Six other of the accused also attended the Ar-Rahman centre. The facility, in a strip mall in Mississauga, was the focus of intense international media attention Monday.

Meanwhile, the National Post located an isolated rural property just outside the Ontario town of Washago, 90 minutes north of Toronto, that neighbours said was used as a training ground by the suspects.

Residents reported seeing up to a dozen men dressed in camouflage coming and going from the densely wooded acreage and hearing automatic gunfire from the property last December and January.

Sources said police had the entire area under surveillance while the suspects were at the makeshift training camp and were prepared for the worst, including keeping the commandos of JTF-2 nearby as a force of last resort.

''They're the counter-terrorism unit (of the Canadian Forces), so of course they'd be involved,'' said another officer familiar with the operation. ''But their involvement was pretty minimal there were like 400 cops in on this, so they never got the call.''

The soldiers, along with a pair of Griffin helicopters of 427 Special Operations Aviation Squadron from Petawawa, Ont., were kept on alert at two bases, CFB Borden and CFB Meaford, the two nearest Canadian Forces bases, the source said.

Officials at the Department of National Defence would neither confirm nor deny JTF-2's involvement in the lengthy investigation into the alleged terror plot.

''For reasons of operational security, National Defence does not discuss the activities of its special forces,'' spokesman Jay Paxton said Monday.

Michele Paradis, a spokeswoman for the RCMP, confirmed that the military was included in the task force handling the case, but would not give any details about which units were involved, or what role they played.

However, security experts said they would not be surprised that JTF-2 was involved in the case, if only on a standby basis.

In a 15-minute telephone conversation Monday, U.S. President George W. Bush expressed his appreciation for Canada's efforts to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Liberal Leader Bill Graham, meanwhile, said Canada must continue its military role in Afghanistan or risk more terrorist threats at home.

Canada's troops are in Afghanistan precisely to bring peace to that country, he said, and ''we hope well succeed in that engagement, which is so important for Canada and the international community.''

''I'm afraid that if we don't succeed, the threats will get bigger. The success of our forces in Afghanistan are more and more important, as shown by what we happened this weekend.''

National Post

Eds: Updates with lawyer's comments and list of itemsseized. Corrects spelling of Zakaria. Includes elements of separatestory by Chris Wattie, already filed. Eds: Today in copy is Tuesday