Canada foiled Iranian plot to assassinate former minister, says NGO

Israel supporter Irwin Cotler served as justice minister from 2003 to 2006.

The week of November 11, Canadian authorities foiled an assassination attempt targeting former Minister of Justice and human rights defender Irwin Cotler which would have been orchestrated by Iran, this lawyer's organization explained on Monday, November 18. . Confirming information from the English-speaking newspaper The Globe and Mailthe Raoul Wallenberg Center, of which Irwin Cotler is president, confirmed having been informed at the end of October of imminent threats to his life from Iranian agents.

However, he did not “no information or details regarding possible arrests”declared Brandon Golfman, spokesperson for the organization, in an email to AFP. Tehran for its part denied “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 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, be placed by Canada on its list of terrorist entities. He 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 Gaza Strip. According to the Globe and Mailhis 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.