TORONTO — From an unmarried computer programmer to a university health sciences graduate and the unemployed, the 17 suspects charged in a foiled terrorist plot represent a "broad strata'' of Canadian society.

"Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed,'' RCMP assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell said Saturday.

The 12 men in custody range in age from 19 to 43 and are residents of Toronto, Mississauga and Kingston, Ont., while the five youths cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Rocco Galati, lawyer for two of the Mississauga suspects, said Ahmad Ghany is a 21-year-old health sciences graduate from McMaster University in Hamilton. He was born in Canada, the son of a medical doctor who emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago in 1955.

Shareef Abdelhaleen is a 30-year-old unmarried computer programmer of Egyptian descent, Galati said. He emigrated from Egypt at the age of 10 with his father who is now an engineer on contract with Atomic Energy of Canada, the lawyer said.

Galati said neither of his clients have criminal records and are both "model citizens.''

"Both of their families are very well-established professionals, well-established families, no criminal pasts whatsoever,'' Galati said. "That's why we're anxious to see the particulars of the allegations against them.''

The middle-class east-end Toronto neighbourhood that terror suspect Steven Chand calls home is filled with children, lined with two-storey homes and rich green, well-maintained lawns.

Area resident Casey Grenier, 32, stood with two neighbours enjoying a beer on a porch next door to Chand's residence were unmarked cars and police officers were parked.

"It's a real quiet neighbourhood,'' Grenier said. "You get up in the morning and you hear the crickets chirping.''

Grenier said police pulled up at the residence around 4 p.m. with forensics trucks and a SWAT team and blocked off the street. Police were seen by neighbours leaving the residence carrying sealed Ziploc bags containing unspecified items.

Neighbours said Chand, also known as Abdul Shakur, rented a basement apartment in the home, owned by Mohammad Attique, a father of five.

Attique operated an Islamic bookstore from the home, but neighbours drew up a petition last year calling for the business to be shut down because it was being operated in a residential neighbourhood.

Neighbours said the owner had built a two-level garage behind the home to house the bookstore, and was allegedly dumping debris into an electrical field with power lines behind the house.

Grenier said residents of the home kept to themselves, but he noticed unusual activity in the early morning hours.

"You never see them during the day, always deliveries late at night, early in the morning,'' said Grenier, a Toronto Transit Commission employee. "I get home at about 2:30, 3 o'clock (in the morning) and you always see people coming in and out, but you just assume it's books coming out.''

Grenier said residents of the home often irritated neighbours by not maintaining their property.

A stroller was parked outside the front door of the semi-detached Toronto home of Fahim Ahmad, 21, Saturday, the scene of a police raid the night before.

A middle-aged woman who witnessed the raid said police told her to stay inside her home and away from her windows.

"I was shocked that this happened and I was a nervous wreck last night,'' said the female neighbour, who asked not to be identified.

The woman said she'd never seen anything out of the ordinary happening at the home.

A young woman in her 20s at Ahmad's residence refused comment.

Jim Kovac was in his basement exercising when his wife saw SWAT teams out front and called him up to the main floor where police were raiding the Mississauga home of Asad Ansari, 21, on Friday.

"Two things went through my head: it was either drugs or terrorists,'' said Kovac, 24, who lives two doors down from the home. "It's hard to believe, but I guess it could happen anywhere.''

Residents of a Mississauga, Ont., neighbourhood knew little about Zakaria Amara, 20. Neighbours said he was an in-law of the family who lived at the home.

Neighbours said the family, a mother and her three daughters, had lived there for two years. They had not noticed a male figure in the house.

Tony Sbrocchi, 38, a neighbourhood resident for 10 years, said he saw individuals backing a U-Haul into the driveway of the residence and loading up the vehicle on Monday, and that a group of three unfamiliar males left the next morning.

"It was very suspicious,'' Sbrocchi said, adding that he was unsure of what was being loading into the truck.

While the RCMP said suspects Mohammed Dirie, 22, and Yasim Mohamed, 24, were from Kingston, Ont., members of the city's Muslim community were at a loss as to who the men were and what they were doing in this eastern Ontario city.

"I have been asking around and no one seems to know them,'' Hafizur Rahman, president of the Islamic Centre of Kingston told the Ottawa Sun.

Taking into consideration the men's ages, Rahman told the Sun they may be students at Queen's University.

However, Haseeb Khan, president of the Muslim Students' Association at Queen's, also didn't recognize the men's names.

After asking members of his executive and several students at the school Saturday, he was still unsure whether they attend the university.

"We don't seem to know those people at all,'' he said.