November 29, 2024
Canada has foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate a former justice minister and rights activist who has been a strong critic of Tehran, the Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto has reported. Irwin Cotler, 84, was justice minister and attorney general from 2003 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2015.
He is a Liberal Party member from Quebec. According to the Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest circulating daily, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) informed Cotler in October that he faced an immediate threat of assassination from Iranian agents within 48 hours. Cotler confirmed the Globe and Mail report and told RadioCanada November 18 that he has been under police protection for over a year.
Cotler’s name reportedly also came up in an FBI investigation of a 2022 Iranian murder for-hire operation in New York that targeted the human rights activist Masih Alinejad. Canadian officials did not immediately comment on the report.
Cotler, who is Jewish, has received police protection over the past year, over security concerns linked to his global advocacy to have the Pasdaran listed as a terrorist entity. Ottawa, which severed diplomatic ties with Iran more than a decade ago, listed the Pasdaran as a banned terror group in June.
As a lawyer, Cotler also represented Iranian political prisoners and dissidents. He is international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights and a strong backer of Israel. His daughter, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, is an Israeli politician and diplomat who previously served as a member of Israel’s parliament.