Shadows in Our Midst

A New Year's Eve alarm has its roots in Canada, but are there really al-Qaeda fugitives on the loose?

Can buying a snowblower, a barbecue and a couple of lawn mowers in Canada make you a suspected link to al-Qaeda? Michael John Hamdani, 44, became just that after a shopping spree late last October in Brampton, a city west of Toronto. The owners of a shop that he and a friend had patronized believed they had received bogus U.S. traveler's checks and alerted the police. A raid on the homes of Hamdani and his pal turned up an array of big-screen TVs and other luxury goods, $600,000 in forged American Express and Thomas Cook checks, a state-of-the-art counterfeiting operation complete...

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