Canada foiled Iran plot to assassinate former minister

Ottawa, Canada — 

Canadian authorities precocious foiled an alleged Iranian crippled to assassinate Irwin Cotler, a erstwhile justness curate who has been a beardown professional of Tehran, Cotler's enactment said Monday.

The 84-year-old was justness curate and lawyer wide from 2003 to 2006. He retired from authorities successful 2015 but has remained progressive with galore associations that run for quality rights astir the world.

The Globe and Mail paper reported that helium was informed connected October 26 that helium faced an imminent menace — wrong 48 hours — of assassination from Iranian agents.

Authorities tracked 2 suspects successful the plot, the insubstantial said, citing an unnamed source.

In an email to AFP, the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, wherever Cotler is planetary chair, confirmed The Globe and Mail report.

Cotler “has nary cognition oregon details regarding immoderate arrests made,” said Brandon Golfman, an enactment spokesperson.

A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc declined to comment, telling AFP: "We cannot remark on, nor corroborate circumstantial RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] operations owed to information reasons."

Another elder authorities minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, called the crippled "very concerning."

Jean-Yves Duclos, the government's elder curate successful Quebec province, wherever Cotler lives, said it was apt "very hard for (Cotler), successful particular, and his household and friends to hear" astir it.

The House of Commons, meanwhile, passed a unanimous question praising Cotler's enactment successful defence of quality rights and "condemning the decease threats against him orchestrated by agents of a overseas regime."

Cotler had already been receiving constabulary extortion for much than a twelvemonth aft the Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught successful Israel by Hamas gunmen.

Cotler, who is Jewish and a beardown backer of Israel, has advocated globally to person Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps listed arsenic a violent entity.

His sanction reportedly besides came up successful an FBI probe of a 2022 Iranian murder-for-hire cognition successful New York that targeted American human-rights activistic Masih Alinejad.

Ottawa, which severed diplomatic ties with Iran much than a decennary ago, listed the Revolutionary Guard arsenic a banned violent radical successful June.

It said astatine the clip that Iranian authorities displayed a accordant "disregard for quality rights some wrong and extracurricular of Iran, arsenic good arsenic a willingness to destabilize the planetary rules-based order."

As a lawyer, Cotler besides represented Iranian governmental prisoners and dissidents.

His daughter, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, is an Israeli person and diplomat who antecedently served arsenic a subordinate of Israel's parliament.