Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Today's News: Extraordinary warning about threats from India


Well, I was going to put up a light-hearted post tonight about Thanksgiving - cartoons, nice stories, etc. 
But then this happened: The Toronto Star article gives us a blow-by-blow of how Canada tried to inform India about its findings: Inside Canada’s struggle to engage with the Modi government — and why it ended with the expulsion of six Indian diplomats RCMP alleges that Indian diplomats and consular officials in Canada are tied to murders, violence, intimidation and threats against Canadians.
...The two countries each expelled six diplomats as the Mounties disclosed their suspicions in a news conference after efforts by top Canadian officials, in Washington and Singapore, failed over the past week to resolve an impasse in their investigations.
RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme told reporters that the situation required immediate public disclosure in an effort to disrupt what is going on.
...So far, Duheme said, eight people have been charged in Canada with homicides — although he refused to specify the number of Canadian deaths or the time frame involved.
And 22 individuals stand charged with extortion, or acts of intimidation, coercion, threats and harassment that Canadian authorities now see as likely connected to agents acting at the Indian government’s direction. Police have given warnings to 13 Canadians since last September that they are potential targets of Indian agents. Some have received multiple threats, and they have been on the rise in recent weeks, police say.
More explosive is the allegation that Indian government officials posted in Canada are “directly” linked to the violence.
...things ramped up in earnest about six weeks ago.
The RCMP had by then determined a pattern in a series of investigations in a number of cities across Canada, the sources said: it appeared Indian diplomats and consular officials in Canada were conveying information about the movements and activities of certain Canadians back to Indian intelligence officials in India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, known as RAW.
According to the sources, speaking confidentially in order to discuss Canada’s findings, that information appeared to be then conveyed to a criminal gang in India, whose leader Lawrence Bishnoi is in Indian prison custody but uncharged, and in turn passed on to individuals in Canada who police allege are “agents of India” acting to intimidate, threaten and even kill Canadians.
The prime minister, Foreign Affairs Minister MΓ©lanie Joly and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters on Monday that the primary targets of the interference have been Sikh Canadians, but said the threats went beyond that community to include other South Asian Canadians. All three said they have shared the information with counterparts in the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance that includes the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand....
The New York Times also provided some details in its report on the story: Canada expells India diplomats Canada Expels Indian Diplomats, Accusing Them of Criminal Campaign The Canadian police said the Indian government had orchestrated homicides and extortion in Canada to intimidate Sikh separatists. India, in return, kicked out Canadian diplomats.
...The breakdown in the relationship between the two countries has gone all the way to the top. Mr. Trudeau said on Monday that he had confronted his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, about the investigation last week in Laos, where both men were attending a summit.
The Canadian leader said he had asked Mr. Modi for India’s cooperation ahead of a meeting between national security officials from both countries in Singapore. The officials were to discuss the involvement of Indian diplomats in what the authorities have described as serious criminal activities against Sikhs in Canada.
“I impressed upon him that it needed to be taken very, very seriously,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa at a news conference.
Despite the one-on-one discussion between the leaders, the Singapore meeting did not produce the cooperation Canadian officials had sought, leading to the diplomatic expulsions.
“We will never tolerate the involvement of a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil, a deeply unacceptable violation of Canada’s sovereignty and of international law,” Mr. Trudeau said.
...{RCMP said they] were taking the unusual step of going public because of a “significant threat to public safety in our country.”
Mr. Duheme said his officers had investigated and charged “a significant number of individuals for their direct involvement in homicides, extortions and other criminal acts of violence.” He said there had been more than a dozen credible threats to life against members of the Sikh community in Canada. The Indian government agents, including the six diplomats expelled, were based not just in Ottawa, the capital, but also in Vancouver and Toronto and other cities across Canada where Sikhs live.
...the [RCMP] investigations had found that [India] it was running a major intelligence-gathering network in Canada. Some of those involved in the network were paid, he said, while others were coerced into helping.
“The information collected by the government of India is then used to target members of the South Asian community,” Mr. Duheme said.
India’s intelligence services have long been accused of directing the killings of opponents inside neighboring countries.
Canada’s accusations against India regarding the Nijjar assassination of have been bolstered by the findings of an American investigation into a similar, though unsuccessful, plot against a U.S.-based Sikh cleric. Last November, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said they had found connections between both plots.
More comments: As always, when its anything to do with Canadian security issues, I check Wesley Wark and tonight he posts this: Nothing happens on Thanksgiving, right? Wrong.
....This is pretty stunning news from the RCMP. Taking the extraordinary step of the releasing information while a law enforcement investigation is ongoing was clearly designed to deter further criminal action, provide a broader notice to the South Asian community about threats, and counter an official Indian government narrative.
It was also in response, we learned, to a previously undisclosed meeting held in Singapore on October 12, immediately following the ASEAN summit. Three senior Canadian officials: the RCMP Deputy Commissioner for Federal Policing/National Security, Mark Fynn; the National Security and Intelligence Adviser to the PM, Nathalie Drouin; and the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, David Morrison, met with Indian counterparts to present Canadian evidence about the India government’s involvement in interference in Canada. The meeting did not go well and failed to budge the Indian government from its official position of see and hear no evil.
That official Indian narrative is an attempt by the Modi government to sustain the tattered remnants of plausible deniability surrounding its involvement in an extrajudicial killing on Canadian soil and the reach of its foreign interference activities. It has responded to the most recent allegations and the expulsion of its diplomats from Canada by spluttering and trying to place the blame on Canadian domestic politics. Here goes: “The Government of India strongly rejects these preposterous imputations and ascribes them to the political agenda of the Trudeau Government that is centered around vote bank politics.”
During the Q and A at the RCMP press conference some more details about the extent of RCMP investigations and charges were revealed. Not only was it confirmed that 8 individuals had been charged with murder (in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar), but that a further 22 charges of extortion had been laid, some with connection to Indian government officials. The Bishnoi gang was named as one proxy engaged in these activities.
The RCMP Commissioner noted that the request to lift diplomatic immunity provisions under the Geneva Convention from Indian diplomats in Canada so that they could be interviewed by law enforcement was refused by the Indian government. No real surprise there....
A video of the press conference: RCMP Press Conference here 
Here is the RCMP statement: Here is Trudeau's statement: I guess the Comms staff for the CPC weren't at work today, because Poilievre had to post his statement as an attachment to Michael Chong's twitter account: The India statement: I'm remembering now that a number of Canadian reporters reacted with derision and cynicism when Trudeau first told us a year ago that India was behind the June 2023 assissination of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, until the story was confirmed by the United States in December. And also, this:
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