Police in Canada have arrested two men they accuse of conspiring to commit an "al-Qaeda supported" attack that was to derail a passenger train in the Greater Toronto Area. The arrests are the result of cross-border investigation which also involved US law enforcement.
Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, of Montreal, and Raed Jaser, 35, from Toronto, are charged with conspiracy to carry out a terrorist attack and "conspiring to murder persons unknown for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a terrorist group."
The purported plot is said to have no link to the recent bombings in Boston, nor is there evidence the alleged plot was state-sponsored.
Neither is a Canadian citizen, but the police did not reveal their nationalities. A spokeswoman for the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique near Montreal confirmed that Esseghaier was a doctoral student at the research institute and that he had been arrested. Julie Martineau, the school's director of communications, said Esseghaier arrived at the school in 2010 and was about midway through his degree. "He is doing a PhD in the field of energy and materials sciences," she told Reuters.
adds Jeff Stein at Spy Talk digs up similar background:
One of the suspects in an alleged terrorist plot to blow up a Canadian railway line may be the same man as listed as a Tunis-born biological engineer at a prestigious research institute in Quebec, who features an al Qaeda banner on his Linked-in web site
Well, who among us hasn't placed an al Qaeda banner on our LinkedIn page for lul—wait, what? For real? Not hoaxed or hacked?
A screengrab below:
