Canada foiled Iran plot to assassinate former justice minister: Report

Canadian authorities reportedly foiled an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate a former justice minister and rights activist who has been a strong critic of Tehran, The Globe and Mail newspaper reported Monday.

Irwin Cotler, 84, was justice minister and attorney general from 2003 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2015 but has remained active with many associations that campaign for human rights around the world.

According to the Globe and Mail, he was informed on October 26 that he faced an imminent threat - within 48 hours - of assassination from Iranian agents.

Authorities tracked two suspects in the plot, the paper said, citing an unnamed source.

“We cannot comment on, nor confirm specific RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) operations due to security reasons,” a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told AFP.

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Jean-Yves Duclos, the government’s senior minister in Quebec province, where Cotler lives, commented that it was likely “very difficult for (Cotler), in particular, and his family and friends to hear” about the alleged plot.

Cotler had already been receiving police protection for more than a year after the October 7, 2023 attack in Israel by Hamas gunmen.

He is Jewish and has advocated globally to have Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps listed as a terrorist entity.

His name reportedly also came up in an FBI probe of a 2022 Iranian murder-for-hire operation in New York that targeted American human-rights activist Masih Alinejad.

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Ottawa, which severed diplomatic ties with Iran more than a decade ago, listed the Revolutionary Guard as a banned terror group in June.

It said at the time that Iranian authorities displayed a consistent “disregard for human rights both inside and outside of Iran, as well as a willingness to destabilize the international rules-based order.”

As a lawyer, Cotler also represented Iranian political prisoners and dissidents. He is additionally international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and a strong backer of Israel.

His daughter, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, is an Israeli politician and diplomat who previously served as a member of Israel’s parliament.