Canadian authorities have arrested two men, Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser with links to Al Qaeda with conspiring to murder people on a VIA Canadian railway passenger train, Reuters reported. While the subjects had the capacity to carry out an attack, the public was never in imminent danger, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Monday.
Police said the subjects were "receiving support from al Qaeda elements in Iran."
The subjects are scheduled to make their first court appearance on Tuesday, police said, and are charged with conspiring to murder persons unknown for the benefit of, at the direction of, in association with a terrorist group, police said in a statement, CNN reported.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) quoted "highly placed sources" as saying the suspects were under surveillance for more than a year, and that the investigation was "part of a cross-border operation involving law enforcement agencies, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security."
U.S. officials stressed that there was no link between their plot with the Boston Marathon bombings last week. Revelations lately suggest that Canadians took part in an attack by suspected terrorists on a gas plant in Algeria in January.
In 2006, multiple arrests (more than a dozen) of Toronto-area men were accused of planning to plant bombs at various Canadian targets, the New York Post reported.
Authorities also underscore the public was never in "imminent danger." Chief Superintendent Jennifer Strachan said that the two men watched trains in and around Toronto and were plotting to attack a train operated by Via Rail Canada, the government-owned rail system, within Canada, New York Times reported.
Their nationalities were not revealed, but were not Canadian citizens.
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