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Canadian Police Recover Ammonium Nitrate After Sale Questioned

https://www.chemnet.com   Jun 10,2010 (Bloomberg)
June 9 -- Canadian police said they recovered a large quantity of ammonium nitrate, a chemical fertilizer that can be used to make a bomb, after a sale of the material ahead of world leaders meeting in Toronto was deemed suspicious.

“The ammonium nitrate has been recovered from two addresses in Toronto,”police said today in a statement.“There are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the purchase.”

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported a man bought 1,625 kilograms (3,582 pounds) of the fertilizer. Timothy McVeigh used 1,814 kilograms of ammonium nitrate to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people, prosecutors said.

Police began a search for the man who bought the ammonium nitrate in southern Ontario on May 26, about a month before leaders of the 20 most industrialized nations are scheduled to gather in Toronto for a summit. Police said they don’t know of any connection between the man, described as white, in his late 50s or early 60s, 5 feet 6 inches (168 centimeters) to 5 feet 8 inches tall and stocky, and the G-20 summit.

“He falsely misrepresented himself,”Inspector Gord Sneddon, acting assistant criminal operations officer with the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team in Ontario, said earlier today at a news conference in Toronto.“It’s something suspicious.”

The National Security Enforcement Team is led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The buyer contacted police after the news conference, police said. No charges are expected to be filed, police said.

New York Border

Police said the purchase was made at the Vineland Growers Co-operative in Jordan Station, Ontario, 101 kilometers (63 miles) south of Toronto near the New York border.

The supplier believed the man was making the purchase on behalf of a regular customer, who is known to the sellers, police said in a statement.



“This was subsequently found not to be the case,”the police said in the statement.“The unidentified customer paid cash and no identification was obtained.”

Sneddon declined to say exactly how much ammonium nitrate was bought.

“You don’t need a lot of ammonium nitrate to build an explosive device,”he said.


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