Canadian police thwart ‘al-Qaeda-backed terror plot’

Canadian police thwarted what they described as an Al-Qaeda-supported terror plot that aimed to derail a passenger train in the Ottawa area.

Two arrests were made Monday, Canadian police said, in Montreal and Toronto, at the successful conclusion of an investigation that began last August. The plotters had the capacity to carry out the attacks, but at no point was there a danger to the public, police said.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police named the suspects as Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35. They said they had targeted the VIA Rail train system.

“It was definitely in the planning stage but not imminent,” RCMP chief superintendent Jennifer Strachan said. “We are alleging that these two individuals took steps and conducted activities to initiate a terrorist attack. They watched trains and railways.”

“This is the first known al-Qaeda planned attack that we’ve experienced in Canada,” Superintendent Doug Best told a news conference.

Charges against the two men include conspiring to carry out an attack and murder people in association with a terrorist group. Police said the men are not Canadian citizens, but declined to say where they were from or why they were in the country. Best said they had been in Canada “a significant amount of time,” but would not say how long.

“Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in innocent people being killed or seriously injured,” Assistant RCMP Commissioner James Malizia told reporters in Toronto, adding that the two men had “direction and guidance” from “al-Qaeda elements located in Iran,” though there was no reason to think the planned attacks were state-sponsored.

The arrests raised questions about Iran’s murky relationship with the terrorist network. Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran who is now a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said al-Qaeda has had a clandestine presence in Iran since at least 2001 and that neither the terror group nor Tehran speak openly about it.

“The Iranian regime kept some of these elements under house arrest,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “Some probably operate covertly. AQ members often transit Iran traveling between hideouts in Pakistan and Iraq.”

US intelligence officials have long tracked limited al-Qaeda activity inside Iran. Remnants of al-Qaeda’s so-called management council are still there, though they are usually kept under virtual house arrest by an Iranian regime suspicious of the Sunni-/Salafi-based militant movement. There are also a small number of financiers and facilitators who help move money, and sometimes weapons and people throughout the region from their base in Iran.

Last fall, the Obama administration offered up to $12 million in rewards for information leading to the capture of two al-Qaeda leaders based in Iran. The US State Department described them as key facilitators in sending extremists to Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Treasury Department also announced financial penalties against one of the men.

Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations, said the terrorist network was not operating in Iran.

“Iran’s position against this group is very clear and well known. [Al-Qaeda] has no possibility to do any activity inside Iran or conduct any operation abroad from Iran’s territory,” Miryousefi said in a statement emailed to the AP late Monday. “We reject strongly and categorically any connection to this story.”

Several people had been under surveillance for several months regarding the plot.

The police said there were no links between this case and the Boston Marathon bombings.

Canadian police said US intelligence and other services had played a role in thwarting the plot.