Canada's Antiterror Laws Debated in Detention of 19 Suspects

As government lawyers argued this week for the continued detention without charges of 19 Pakistani and Indian students and refugees, they suggested that the group was connected to Al Qaeda and interested in attacking both a nuclear power plant and the CN Tower.

In discussing the case this week, however, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner, Giuliano Zaccardelli, said, ''I can assure you there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that there's any terrorist threat anywhere in this country related to this investigation.''

The apparent contradiction underscored the muddled picture emerging from the investigation of the group.

Prosecutors said the 19 were affiliated with a Canadian business school that exists in name only, had falsified immigration papers and identities and lived for months with little or no clear source of income.

The evidence that they were anything more than illegal immigrants, however, remains mostly circumstantial, in the view of some legal analysts. Some newspaper columnists and civil rights advocates contend that the case proves that antiterrorism legislation allowing for detention based on simple suspicion of illegal terrorist activity, enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, oversteps constitutional guarantees.

Based on the detention documents, these are some of the government's suspicions:

* The men lived together in apartments in clusters of four or five, and when they moved, they moved together. Two of the apartments recently had fires, which may indicate the men were testing explosives.

* Two of the men were observed by the police walking around the perimeter of the Pickering Nuclear Power station outside Toronto in the predawn hours of April 2002. Another took flying lessons at a school that flew practice runs by the plant.

* At least one member of the group lived with a man who used a letter of reference for an apartment from the Global Relief Foundation, a charity banned in the United States and listed by the United Nations as a financial front for terrorist groups.

* The recent theft of a construction device that contained small amounts of radioactive materials that could be used to build primitive nuclear explosives.

''I guess the easiest way of putting it is there is a suggestion they might in fact be perhaps a sleeper cell for Al Qaeda,'' said Terry McKay, a government lawyer presenting evidence to the quasi-judicial Immigration and Refugee Board.

Government officials have said the police need to sift through 30 computer hard drives and 25 boxes of other evidence collected at several apartments. That could take weeks if not months, officials said. They argued the 19 should remain held without charges because they might flee.

But members of the immigration board have so far released 2 of the 19 on bond. The immigration board has agreed to continue holding at least 10 others, with decisions pending on the rest. All face allegations of immigration violations and could face deportation even if no terrorism charges are ultimately filed.

Not everyone thinks the suspicions are justified.

The superintendent of one of the apartments that had a fire said he believed it was caused by a greasy stove, and officials at the flying school said the police had known of one student from India taking lessons since late 2001 and had not acted on the information until now.