Following up on the story

Following up on the story of the five suspected terrorists who apparently entered the U.S. from Canada around Christmas, a minister who lives on Vancouver Island sent us a link to this story in the National Post. If this has been reported in any American newspapers, I have missed it.
The National Post reports that a nurse who lives on Vancouver Island saw two of the wanted men on December 10, while taking the ferry from Vancouver Island to the ferry terminal south of Vancouver. The nurse says she is certain that two of the photographs being circulated by the FBI are the men she saw on the ferry. They caught her attention because of their strange demeanor; the fact that one of them took several dozen digital photographs of the ferry terminal–not normally considered a tourist attraction; and the fact that they carried a large box, measuring about three feet by four feet, which it required both men to lift into a van.
Understandably, the nurse didn’t do anything at the time: “This piece of baggage, after taking the ferry for 12 years, bothered me when nothing else has; and so did these two people,” she said. “I told my husband and others about him when I got home. But what could I do? Phone the police saying a man looked angry?” Ths story illustrates once again that frequently, terrorists do look and act strange. (Richard Reid comes to mind.) And, of course, so far they have all been Arabs. It is vitally important that citizens, and especially policemen, be able to act on their instincts when they see people who seem suspicious, without worrying that they will be accused of “profiling” if those suspicions turn out to be unfounded.

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