Canada's foreign minister says India's remaining diplomats are on notice not to harm Canadians

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Canada's foreign minister says India's remaining diplomats are on notice not to harm Canadians

2024-10-19 01:39 Last Updated At：01:40

TORONTO (AP) — Canada’s foreign minister said Friday that India’s remaining diplomats in the country are “clearly on notice” not to endanger Canadian lives after New Delhi’s top envoy in Canada was named a person of interest in the assassination of a Sikh activist.

India's high commissioner was expelled Monday along with five other diplomats, prompting Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly to compare India to Russia, saying Canada’s national police force has linked Indian diplomats to homicides, death threats and intimidation in Canada

Joly said Friday that Canada won't tolerate foreign diplomats putting the lives of Canadians at risk.

“We’ve never seen that in our history. That level of transnational repression cannot happen on Canadian soil. We’ve seen it elsewhere in Europe. Russia has done that in Germany and the U.K. and we needed to stand firm on this issue," she said in Montreal.

Asked if other Indian diplomats will be expelled, Joly said: “They are clearly on notice. Six of them have been expelled including the high commissioner in Ottawa. Others were mainly from Toronto and Vancouver and clearly we won’t tolerate any diplomats that are in contravention of the Vienna convention.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police went public this week with allegations that Indian diplomats were targeting Sikh separatists in Canada by sharing information about them with their government back home. They said top Indian officials were then passing that information along to Indian organized crime groups who were targeting the activists, who are Canadian citizens, with drive-by shootings, extortions and even murder.

India, for its part, has rejected the Canadian accusations as absurd, and its foreign ministry said it was expelling Canada’s acting high commissioner and five other diplomats in response.

Canada is not the only country that has accused Indian officials of plotting an assassination on foreign soil. The U.S. Justice Department announced criminal charges against an Indian government employee Thursday in connection with an alleged foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.

In the case announced by the Justice Department, Vikash Yadav, who authorities say directed the New York plot from India, faces murder-for-hire charges in a planned killing that prosecutors have previously said was meant to precede a string of other politically motivated murders in the United States and Canada.

U.S. authorities have said the killing of the American Sikh man was to have taken place just days after Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh activist who was shot and killed outside a cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18, 2023. Prosecutors say the goal was to kill at least four people in Canada and the U.S. by June 29, 2023, and then more after that.

The Nijjar killing in Canada has soured India-Canada ties for more than a year, and despite Canada’s assertion that it has forwarded evidence of its allegations to Indian authorities, the Indian government continues to deny it has seen any.

India has repeatedly criticized the Canadian government for being soft on supporters of what is known as the Khalistan movement, which is banned in India but has support among the Sikh diaspora, particularly in Canada.

Trudeau said Wednesday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined to him at a G-20 summit in India last year that he wanted Canada to arrest people who have been outspoken against the Indian government. Trudeau said he told Modi that he felt the actions fall within free speech in Canada.

Trudeau added that he told Modi his government would work with India on concerns about terrorism, incitement of hate or anything that is unacceptable in Canada. But Trudeau also noted that advocating for separatism, though not Canadian government policy, is not illegal in Canada.

The RCMP said they uncovered evidence of an intensifying campaign against Canadians by agents of the Indian government.

Nijjar, 45, was fatally shot last year in his pickup truck. An Indian-born citizen of Canada, he owned a plumbing business and was a leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland.

Four Indian nationals living in Canada were charged with Nijjar’s murder and are awaiting trial.

After Sinwar's death, hostage families see a 'window of opportunity' to bring their loved ones home

2024-10-19 01:36 Last Updated At：01:40

JERUSALEM (AP) — Two days after Israeli forces killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, families of the hostages taken last year are urging the government to use this moment to bring their loved ones home.

Many are caught between deep fear and cautious optimism. They worry the militants holding their loved ones captive might now take matters into their own hands and retaliate against the hostages for Sinwar's death. But they also see a glimmer of hope: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may now be able to claim victory on one of his war goals, destroying Hamas politically, and pivot to the other, returning the hostages.

“Netanyahu and the U.S. said in the last couple of weeks that Sinwar was the obstacle to getting a deal. Now he's not the obstacle. So this should bring them to take advantage of the window of opportunity to get a deal done, and fast,” said Ruby Chen, 55, father of American-Israeli hostage Itay Chen.

Chen, a 19-year-old former Boy Scout who loved basketball, was kidnapped from a military base on Oct. 7, 2023, one of some 250 hostages taken that day, in an attack where Hamas fighters killed roughly 1,200 people across southern Israel. Ruby Chen said the military has told the family they had some indication that Itay died in captivity, but he’s not sure that claim is true.

Assassinating Sinwar has been a top priority for Israel's military since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli soldiers killed the Hamas leader in a chance encounter Wednesday, Israel’s military said, with a tank shell fired into a building where he was taking refuge following a gunfight with Israeli soldiers.

Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Ceasefire negotiations to secure their release have sputtered time and time again, and hostage families have criticized Netanyahu for prioritizing military victory over a deal.

“Mr. Netanyahu had a very dark legacy up to this day,” said Efrat Machikawa, 56, the niece of 80-year-old hostage Gadi Moses, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. “But the time is now, exactly now ... Now is his chance to make sure all the hostages are coming back, the dead so they can have a proper burial and the living so they can be returned to their families.”

During a recent round of negotiations over a deal proposed by the Biden administration, Netanyahu refused to agree to withdraw Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip at war's end, a precondition for Hamas to agree to release hostages, and one Sinwar is believed to have clung to fiercely.

Now that Sinwar is dead, hostage families have reason to believe that both Netanyahu and Hamas negotiators could soften their stance.

In a speech late Thursday, Netanyahu said Sinwar's death does not mean the war is over. But he signaled that the killing could bring a deal closer, calling the return of the hostages his “supreme obligation,” and offering immunity to Hamas fighters who “put down their weapons and leave our hostages.”

To Ricardo Grichener, the uncle of 23-year-old hostage Omer Wenkert, Netanyahu's tone sounds more sincere than ever before.

“Before now, he was always aggressive, talking about how we needed to annihilate everyone from Hamas. Now he seems more dedicated, talking about returning the hostages as his own personal mission,” Grichener said.

Grichener's nephew, Wenkert, has colitis, an intestinal disease for which he needs daily medication. A hostage held with Wenkert in the tunnels who was released last year has said the conditions were dismal: they lived in complete darkness, slept on sand, and ate only three dates a day, and half a bottle of water every two days.

“Time is of the essence,” Grichener said.

“After 12 months held in nonhuman conditions, we are afraid that our lived ones will not survive. Especially after Sinwar's death, we don’t know who is controlling the guards. We don’t know if there will be any retaliation against the hostages. We need a deal now.”