Canadian authorities last week foiled an assassination attempt targeting former Minister of Justice and human rights defender Irwin Cotler that was allegedly orchestrated by Iran, this lawyer’s organization explained on Monday.
Confirming information from the English-speaking newspaper The Globe and Mailthe Raoul Wallenberg Center, of which Mr. Cotler is president, confirmed having been informed at the end of October of imminent threats to his life from Iranian agents.
However, he has “no information or details regarding possible arrests,” said Brandon Golfman, spokesperson for the organization in an email to AFP.
Tehran denied Monday evening “the Canadian media’s claim that Iran attempted to assassinate a Canadian,” the official IRNA news agency reported, citing Issa Kameli, director for the Americas at the Iranian Foreign Ministry. .
The Iranian diplomat denounced “a ridiculous story, in line with the disinformation campaign waged against Iran”.
Irwin Cotler, an 84-year-old Jewish lawyer and supporter of Israel, was Minister of Justice from 2003 to 2006.
He attracted the ire of the Tehran regime because of his campaign, waged for years, for the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to be placed by Canada on its list of terrorist entities.
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 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.
Questioned by AFP, a spokesperson for the Minister of Public Security refused to comment.
Commons condemns death threats against Irwin Cotler
But the Canadian Parliament unanimously adopted on Monday a motion saluting the work of Mr. Cotler and condemning “the death threats against him orchestrated by agents of a foreign regime”.
“You are not alone, Mr. Cotler,” summarized on X Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, the Bloc Québécois spokesperson for human rights, at the origin of the motion.
The Chamber also salutes the efforts of this virulent critic of the Iranian regime “in the defense of human rights and in the fight against racism and anti-Semitism”.
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 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.
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