Calgary police displayed on Wednesday some of the firearms and drugs seized during the investigation. (CBC)

More than 250 criminal charges have been laid following an investigation into gangs and drugs in Calgary that took nearly a year and led police to a drug network in Ottawa.

After executing 25 warrants, police seized more than $200,000 worth of drugs and $40,000 in cash, along with 12 guns, Calgary police said in a news release Wednesday.

Thirty-four people face a combined total of more than 250 charges.

The 11-month long investigation targeted people believed to be "affiliated with Ottawa-based gangs and involved in illegal drug activities and violence in Calgary," police said.

The arrests also led to charges in a handful of shootings:

• Abdirahman Hussein, Abdulaziz Abdullah and Ahmed Zalal are charged in an Oct. 5, 2007 shooting at a home on 26th Avenue S.E. that left a man in life-threatening condition.
• Hussein was also charged in an early morning shooting on Feb. 29. A gunshot was fired during a break and enter on 13th Avenue S.W.
• Two men were charged with another early morning Feb. 29 shooting on 10th Avenue S.W. involving an "unco-operative" victim.
• A 25-year-old man was charged in a fourth shooting that occurred at 1:45 a.m. on May 3 outside a business on 6th Street S.W. A man was found lying on the ground, shot in the legs.

Some streets in the southeast neighbourhood of Dover were cordoned off in October 2007 while police investigated a shooting. (CBC)

The activity all appears to relate to a drug distribution system in which orders were made through cellphone calls, followed by delivery of marijuana, ecstasy, crack and even morphine, said investigators.

The suspects identified by police as the primary targets of the investigation are Canadian citizens between the ages of 18 and 29.

All but four of the 34 suspects have been released on various conditions, said police.

Many of those arrested in the investigation have Muslim family names, which angers Imam Syed Soharwardy, head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada based in Calgary.

He said the alleged criminal activities go against Islam and raise old stereotypes.

"No, Muslims are not like this," Soharwardy told CBC News. "This is a bunch of youth, and parents have the responsibility, they have an obligation — from a religious point of view as well as a Canadian point of view — that they should check their children and not get involved in these kinds of things."

Suspect's brother gunned down in community hall

Hussein's brother, Abdalla Ali Hussein, 20, was killed in September at a party at the Albert Park Radisson Heights Community Centre in southeast Calgary.

The gunfire injured four other people. City police said three of them were innocent bystanders but that Hussein and another man were targeted.

At the time, Ottawa police identified Hussein as a member of one of the city's gangs, but Hussein's family denied he had any gang ties.

2 suspects in custody in Ottawa

Abdullah and Zalal, both 21 and charged in the Oct. 5 incident, are currently in custody in Ottawa for a January shooting in that city in a Tim Hortons parking lot on Walkley Road.

According to the Ottawa Citizen, Zalal and his brother Mohamed were charged in connection with gang activities in November 2004.

Mohamed Zalal, named by police as a member of the Ledbury-Banff Crips, was found dead in a field in August 2006. The gang is named after Ottawa streets.

Calgary police Insp. Shaun Gissing said most of those charged are members of well-known Ottawa gangs who had moved west to take advantage of cash-rich Alberta.

"They had been part of some fairly tight-knit gangs in the Ottawa area," Gissing said Wednesday. "As they had migrated to Calgary, they become part of a sort of loose-knit group of individuals, trafficking drugs and involved in the related violence."

With files from Peter Akman