TORONTO — Two men face a bail hearing today after their arrest on charges of plotting a terrorist attack against a Canadian passenger train with support from al-Qaida elements in Iran, authorities said. The case has raised questions about Shiite-led Iran’s murky relationship with the predominantly Sunni Arab terrorist network.
Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, had “direction and guidance” from al-Qaida members in Iran, though there was no reason to think the planned attacks were state-sponsored, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner James Malizia said Monday. Police said the men did not get financial support from al-Qaida, but declined to provide more details.
“This is the first known al-Qaida planned attack that we’ve experienced in Canada,” Superintendent Doug Best told a news conference. Officials in Washington and Toronto said it had no connections to last week’s bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
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 and had been in Canada a “significant amount of time,” but declined to say where they were from or why they were in the country.
The arrests in Montreal and Toronto bolstered allegations by some governments and experts of a relationship of convenience between Iran and al-Qaida.
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