The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced the arrest of two men for plotting a terrorist attack with al-Qaida backing on Monday.
According to CNN, Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, of Montreal, and Raed Jaser, 35, of Toronto were planning to derail a passenger train.
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the accused, neither of whom are Canadian citizens, were receiving “direction and guidance” from an Iranian affiliate of al-Qaida as stated by the Canadian police. The police did not reveal their true nationalities.
Chief Superintendent Jennifer Strachan said in a press conference, “We are alleging that these two individuals took steps and conducted activities to initiate a terrorist attack.”
At Eastern Michigan University, most people had not heard of the close call.
But one who had was Carrie Thyren, who works for the Department of Geology and Geography at EMU said, “I’m actually Canadian, so I was really proud about that. They talked about it on Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. They made a little fun of Canadians which made me a little upset because I’m really patriotic. But I was pretty proud of the fact that they [the RCMP] could handle that. I think they did a great job.”
When asked why they might of wanted to attack Canada she said, “Well, probably because of our association with the United States. We’re neighbors and stuff like that. But I think also because we do support the United States in a lot of the things that they do. I also think they also wanted to maybe remind the United States that they can attack close by if they want to.”
EMU sophomore Margaret Van Dyke said, “I just heard it on the radio on the way down here. It’s, like, terrifying. In Canada, you don’t really hear much about that kind of stuff, so it was kind of shocking. You think of that here in America or overseas. I was imagining Canadians as like, really polite, nice, so why would they attack them?”
This close call comes less than a week after the recent terrorist attack in Boston. A U.S. Department of Justice official said under a condition of anonymity to CBS news that there was no connection between the arrest in Canada to the attack in Boston.
“It was definitely in the planning stage, but not imminent,” Strachan said.
Vic Toews, the minister of public safety, congratulated the Canadian Special Investigation Service (roughly equivalent to the CIA), and the RCMP called “Operation Smooth,” which is ongoing.
“Today’s arrest demonstrates that terrorism continues to be a real threat to Canada,” Toews said to a crowd of reporters on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
“That’s scary, and it’s really sad,” EMU senior Sahar Webster said. “I don’t know what to say. Why is it innocent people? If you want to kill somebody, why don’t you kill somebody in the government? I mean, not to say that that’s better, but I’m just saying, why innocent people? Why civilians?”
The RCMP stressed in a statement that the plot had posed “no imminent threat” to the public or infrastructure. And while the FBI can only get the seriously wounded Bostonian terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to nod or shake his head in answer to questions in Boston, the RCMP was charging both men with terrorism.
EMU sophomore Frank Pagalos said, “It feels like it’s one thing after another. I mean there’s the fertilizer plant catching on fire. Who knows if that was intentional or if that was just an accident? And the Boston bombing, and now this. It seems like a lot more people just want to see the world burn.”
The actual target was Via Rail, the Canadian equivalent to Amtrak, which carries four million riders a year. According to MSNBC, it seems that they had not yet targeted a specific train, just a route.
U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson congratulated the RCMP, and said the arrests were the result of “extensive” cross-border cooperation.
The CBC quoted “highly placed sources,” telling them the suspects had been under surveillance for over a year.
