generation," says Thompson. Impact On the night following the arrests, the Rexdale, Toronto mosque was vandalized, as windows were smashed across the building as well as the cars in the parking lot. Similar vandalism was reported at a mosque in Etobicoke. The arrests sparked several comments by politicians in the US regarding the security of Canada, as well that of the US. Congressman Peter King was reported on June 6 to have said that "there's a large al-Qaeda presence in Canada … because of their very liberal immigration laws, because of how political asylum is granted so easily". John Hostettler, American chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on Border Security said the arrest illustrated that "South Toronto" served as a "enclave for radical discussion", where people held "a militant understanding of Islam". His comments were widely ridiculed by Canadians who pointed out that there is no area of Toronto known as "South Toronto" (the downtown core of the city sits on the north shore of Lake Ontario, placing "South Toronto" in the water), and that none of the suspects were even from the downtown core. Both Canada's Conservative government and the Liberal opposition condemned the "completely uninformed and ignorant remarks". Reporting controversy The initial reports of this incident caused some controversy when a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, Mike McDonell, described the arrested people as representing a "broad strata" of Canadian society, and the Toronto Star claimed that it was "difficult to find a common denominator" among them, even though all were radical Muslims and many attended the same mosque. Some in the media, such as Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review, have described this as a tendency of the police and media to whitewash a role of militant Islam in contemporary terrorism. The media coverage of the arrests was accused of bringing to light underlying racism in Canadian media, after a number of incidents including The Globe and Mail newspaper's use of the term "brown-skinned young men" in describing the men who had rented a storage unit. Imam Aly Hindy, who knew nine of the accused youths personally, said he had doubted any of them "did anything wrong", adding that "If some of them are guilty, I don't think it's terrorism. It may be criminal, but it's not terrorism." Court proceedings A preliminary hearing started June 4, 2007, for the remaining 14 terrorism suspects was halted by the Crown