Canada said to foil Iranian plot to assassinate renowned Jewish jurist Irwin Cotler
Report says former justice minister was informed last month that he faced imminent threat of assassination by Iranian agents, with threat level since lowered
Canadian authorities have reportedly foiled an Iranian attempt to assassinate renowned Jewish jurist Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister and attorney general.
Citing an anonymous source, the Canadian news outlet Globe and Mail reported that Cotler was informed late last month that he faced imminent threat of assassination by Iranian agents, within 48 hours.
The source said Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been tracking two suspects, but could not say if they had been detained or had left the country. The source told the paper that Cotler was informed last week that the threat had been significantly lowered, without giving further details.
Cotler, who also served as Canada’s first special envoy on combating antisemitism, is recognized as an expert on matters of free speech, freedom of religion, minority rights, peace law and war crimes justice. He has close ties to Israel, and his step-daughter, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, is a former member of Knesset.
According to the report, Cotler has been under 24/7 RCMP protection since the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre. The measures include armed guards and armored vehicles.
The report noted that Cotler has raised the ire of the regime in Tehran since 2008 over his efforts to have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared a terrorist organization.
The report also said that the threats could be linked to a Tehran plot to kidnap and assassinate an Iranian-American journalist in New York. Cotler was told by the FBI that his name came up in its probe, the newspaper reported.
The former justice minister has been an outspoken defender of Israel, particularly on the legal front, for many years.
In an in-depth interview with The Times of Israel earlier this year, Cotler decried the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against both Hamas and Israeli leaders as “a false moral and legal equivalence.”
Cotler, a longtime supporter of the ICC, served as a special adviser to the Canadian foreign minister on the court in the late 1990s before it was established, and later headed the Canadian delegation of non-governmental organizations when the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding charter, was adopted in 1998.
However, the court’s activity in regards to Israel over the past year “undermines the ICC as a court of last resort and as a court of limited jurisdiction,” Cotler told The Times of Israel.
“Because the ICC, which I have been a longtime supporter of and remain a supporter of, is being prejudiced in this way, it ends up regrettably prejudicing not only the international justice system in singling out the Israeli leadership, but also contributes to the overall weaponization of international law and international institutions,” he said.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.
