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A Via Rail passenger train pulls into Dorval Station in Montreal. Two men have been charged with a plot to derail a train in Toronto. Photograph: Shaun Best/Reuters
TORONTO — Two men were arrested and charged with plotting a terrorist attack against a Canadian passenger train with support from al-Qaeda “elements” in Iran, police said Monday.
Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, who live in Montreal and Toronto, were planning to derail a Via Rail passenger train in Toronto but posed no immediate threat, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said. “This is the first known al-Qaeda planned attack that we’ve experienced in Canada,” Superintendent Doug Best told a news conference.
RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia said 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. Police said the men did not receive financial support from al-Qaeda, but declined to provide more details.
“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.”
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.
The investigation was part of a cross-border operation involving Canadian law enforcement agencies, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
There is no connection between the Canadian terrorist plot and the Boston Marathon bombings, said a U.S. Justice Department official in Washington, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the source was not permitted to speak on the record about the matter.
Strachan said the two men will attend a bail hearing in Toronto on Tuesday.
Canada train plot suspect traveled to Iran: U.S. officials
By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON | Thu Apr 25, 2013 6:16pm EDT
(Reuters) - Investigators believe one of two suspects charged in Canada with plotting to blow up a railroad track carrying passenger trains traveled to Iran within the past two years, U.S. law enforcement and national security officials said on Thursday.
Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian-born doctoral student, traveled to Iran on a trip that was directly relevant to the investigation of the alleged plot, the officials said.
They declined to say precisely when Esseghaier, who appeared in court on Wednesday in Toronto, had traveled to Iran, whether he had gone there more than once, or whom he was in contact with while there.
When they announced the arrest of Esseghaier and his alleged co-conspirator, Raed Jaser, this week, Canadian police said the two men had received "direction and guidance" in the plot from "al Qaeda elements in Iran."
U.S. national security sources close to the investigation said that was a reference to a network of low- to middle-level al Qaeda fixers and "facilitators" based in the town of Zahedan, close to Iran's borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, that moves money and fighters through Iran to support its activities in South Asia.
Canadian police say there is no sign of Iranian government involvement with the suspects.
Neither Canadian nor U.S. officials have said precisely what interactions they believe Esseghaier or his co-defendant engaged in with the alleged al Qaeda network in Iran. Canadian officials have disclosed only minimal details of the alleged Iran connection in public statements.
Esseghaier and Jaser were arrested on Monday after a joint Canada-U.S. investigation that started last year, based on a tip from a member of the Muslim community.
The pair are charged with plotting to derail a passenger train. U.S. officials said the suspects discussed blowing up a trestle on the railway line carrying daily Amtrak trains between Toronto and New York City shortly before the train was scheduled to pass over the track, thus derailing it.
Esseghaier, 30, has been a doctoral student since 2010 at the INRS institute near Montreal where he is researching the use of nanotechnology to detect cancer and other diseases. In his court appearance, he disputed the authority of Canadian law to judge him, saying the criminal code was not a holy book.
The lawyer for Jaser, 35, said he denied the charges against him and would fight them vigorously.
U.S. law enforcement and national security officials said U.S. and Canadian agencies were investigating whether the suspects had accomplices in the United States or Canada.
One official said there was "another shoe to drop" in the case. Canada's National Post newspaper reported on Thursday that the FBI was holding a third man in New York.
A spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said his service was not granting interviews about the case. The FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)
