Canadian authorities foiled an assassination attempt by Iran last week targeting former Minister of Justice and human rights defender Irwin Cotler, a very critical of Tehran, according to the daily Globe and Mail.
Posted at 11:04 a.m.
Citing an anonymous source, the English-language newspaper reveals Monday that Irwin Cotler was informed at the end of October that he risked being assassinated within 48 hours by Iranian agents.
Questioned by AFP, the authorities refused to comment immediately.
This 84-year-old Jewish lawyer, supporter of Israel, was Minister of Justice from 2003 to 2006.
He has drawn the ire of the Tehran regime for years because of his campaign to have the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, placed by Canada on its entity list terrorists.
Irwin Cotler retired from political life in 2015, but remained very active with numerous associations campaigning for human rights around the world.
He had already benefited from police protection for a little over a year following the attacks of October 7, 2023 in Israel, perpetrated by Hamas commandos infiltrated from the neighboring Gaza Strip.
According to the source of Globe and MailMr. Cotler’s name also appeared in an investigation in the United States surrounding the attempted assassination of Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist and dissident in New York in 2022.
Ottawa, which severed diplomatic relations with Iran more than ten years ago, placed the Revolutionary Guards on its blacklist in June, accusing the Islamic regime of showing “disdain for human rights” and of wanting to “destabilize the international order”.
Mr. Cotler’s daughter, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, is an Israeli politician and diplomat who served as a member of the Israeli parliament.
