Al Qaida linked to Canada rail plot: two arrested

Two men have been arrested and charged with plotting a terrorist attack against a Canadian passenger train with support from al Qaida elements in Iran.

Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, had “direction and guidance” from al Qaida members in Iran, though there was no reason to believe the planned attacks were state-sponsored, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner James Malizia said.

Police said the men did not get financial support from al Qaida but declined to provide more details.

The case bolstered allegations by some governments and experts of a relationship of convenience between Shiite-led Iran and the predominantly Sunni Arab terrorist network.

“This is the first known al Qaida-planned attack that we’ve experienced in Canada,” Superintendent Doug Best told a news conference. Officials in Washington and Toronto said it had no connections to last week’s bombings at the marathon in Boston.

The arrests in Montreal and Toronto raised questions about Iran’s relationship with the terrorist network. Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran who is now a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said al Qaida 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. “Some probably operate covertly. AQ members often transit Iran travelling between hideouts in Pakistan and Iraq.”

Last autumn, the Obama administration offered rewards for information leading to the capture of two al Qaida 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.

The investigation surrounding the planned attack was part of a cross-border operation involving Canadian law enforcement agencies, the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security.

The attack “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.”

Ms Strachan said they were targeting a route, but did not say whether it was a cross-border route.

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 and that they had been in Canada a “significant amount of time”, but declined to say where they were from or why they were in the country. Their bail hearing is scheduled in Toronto later today.

Best said the duo had been under investigation since last autumn.

Authorities were tipped off by members of the community of one of the suspects, Mr Best said.

A spokeswoman for the University of Sherbrooke near Montreal said Esseghaier studied there in 2008-09. More recently, he has been doing doctoral research at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, a spokeswoman at the training university confirmed.