Ties between India and Canada hit a new low last week when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made explosive allegations of a “potential” involvement of Indian agents in the killing of Khalistani extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on June 18 in British Columbia. India had designated Nijjar as a terrorist in 2020.
India has rejected the allegations as “absurd” and “motivated” and expelled a senior Canadian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move to Ottawa’s expulsion of an Indian official over the case. Sources in the Indian government have also told News18 that Ottawa has no evidence to support its allegations.
Trudeau has also been accused of being selective with investigations into the deaths of citizens where foreign interference has been alleged. Sources in Canada told News18 that Trudeau has been selective with investigations into the killing of Chinese-origin Wei Hu and Pakistani-origin Karima Baloch allegedly at the behest of China and Pakistan, respectively.
While Ottawa’s case against New Delhi appears thin and motivated by domestic politics, some infamous extra territorial assassinations have made headlines in the last few decades.
Osama Bin Laden
The most famous instance of overseas targeted killing, Al-Qaeda chief and 9/11 attacks mastermind Osama bin Laden was killed in the clandestine ‘Operation Geronimo’ raid by US Navy Seals in the early hours of May 2, 2011. And it was the location of the raid that stumped the world — Pakistan’s garrison city of Abbottabad.
The operation had global repercussions and dented Pakistan’s international reputation — exposing contradictions in a country that had long served as a rear base for Al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies.
Bin Laden had been living in seclusion for at least five years in Abbottabad, hidden behind the high walls of an imposing white building less than 2km from a renowned military academy.
The raid caught Pakistan between a rock and a hard place. Officials could deny knowing he was there — but in doing so they would effectively be admitting to a shocking intelligence failure.
They could also have admitted that the world’s most infamous fugitive was under their protection, but that would concede being powerless to prevent Washington from carrying out such a daring raid on sovereign soil.
They opted for the former, but the US operation reinforced an already strong anti-American sentiment among a population tired of the heavy financial and human toll paid for the war on terror — and Islamabad’s alliance with Washington after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Then Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan caused a scandal two years ago by telling parliament that bin Laden had died a “martyr”.
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a US strike in Afghanistan on July 31, 2022, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. Until the US announcement, Zawahiri had been rumored variously to be in Pakistan’s tribal area or inside Afghanistan.
A Reuters report dated August 3, 2022 quoted a senior administration official as saying that the US government had been aware of a network supporting Zawahiri and, following the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, officials had been watching for indications of Al Qaeda’s presence in the country.
In 2022, officials identified that Zawahiri’s family – his wife, his daughter and her children – had relocated to a safe house in Kabul and subsequently identified Zawahiri at the same location.
“We were able to build a pattern of life through multiple independent sources of information to inform the operation,” Reuters quoted the official as saying.
Once Zawahiri arrived at the Kabul safe house, officials were not aware of him leaving it and they identified him on its balcony – where he was ultimately struck – on multiple occasions, the official said. The strike was ultimately carried out at 9:48 pm ET (6:18am local time) on July 30, 2022 by a drone firing so-called “hellfire” missiles.
Gen. Qassem Soleimani
The most recent case of cross-territorial killing, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional military activities, was killed in a US drone strike in neighboring Iraq on January 3, 2020. He is hailed as a national icon among supporters of Iran’s theocracy, while the protesters have torn down billboards and defaced other images of him.
Iran had responded to the killing of Soleimani by launching a barrage of missiles at US bases in Iraq, causing dozens of brain concussion injuries but no deaths among US soldiers stationed there. Iranian officials have repeatedly vowed to take further steps and imposed sanctions on individuals accused of taking part in the operation.
Soleimani, who led the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was credited with helping arm, train and lead armed groups across the region, including the Shiite militias in Iraq, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and fighters in Syria, the Palestinian territories and Yemen. The US held him responsible for the deaths of many of its soldiers in Iraq.
Adolf Eichmann
The most famous, and daring, of Israel’s escapades on foreign soil, Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi Holocaust, was executed in 1962 following a war crimes trial.
Eichmann was one of the architects of the Nazis’ “Final Solution”, and he oversaw the rounding up and deportation of Jews to death camps such as Auschwitz.
In 1960, Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency abducted Eichmann from Argentina, where he was living under an assumed identity. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against the Jewish people. He is the only person to have been executed by Israel since its founding in 1948.
In 2016, Israel made public a handwritten request for clemency by Eichmann. In his letter to then-President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Eichmann said he was a “mere instrument” of leaders responsible for the killing of 6 million Jews in World War 2.
His plea for his death sentence to be commuted was dated two days prior to his hanging. In the letter, Eichmann wrote: “I was not a responsible leader, and as such, do not feel myself guilty”.
Alexander Litvinenko
The ex-KGB agent and outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin died aged 43 after drinking green tea laced with polonium-210, a rare and potent radioactive isotope, at London’s Millennium Hotel.
Russian President Vladimir Putin probably approved the killing, a British inquiry concluded in 2016. The Kremlin has denied involvement.
An inquiry led by a senior British judge found that former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoy and another Russian, Dmitry Kovtun, carried out the killing as part of an operation that he said was probably directed by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the main heir to the Soviet-era KGB.
Litvinenko fled Russia for Britain six years to the day before he was poisoned.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Iraqi jihadist who rose from obscurity to declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims as the leader of Islamic State, died in a raid by US special forces in northwest Syria in October 2019.
Baghdadi had long been a target for U.S. and regional security forces trying to eliminate Islamic State, even as they reclaimed most of the territory the group once held.
The Islamic State or caliphate that Baghdadi declared in July 2014 over a quarter of Iraq and Syria was notable for atrocities against religious minorities and attacks on five continents in the name of a version of an ultra-fanatic Islam that horrified mainstream Muslims.
The genocide of Yazidis, adherents of one of the Middle East’s oldest religions, illustrated the brutality of his rule. Thousands of men were slaughtered on their ancestral Sinjar mountain in northwestern Iraq and women were killed or taken as sex slaves. Some other religious groups suffered sexual slavery, slaughter and floggings.
The group also caused global revulsion with beheadings of hostages from countries including the United States, Britain and Japan.
The United States put up a $25 million reward for his capture, the same amount as it had offered for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his successor Ayman al-Zawahri.
With inputs from Reuters, Associated Press and AFP
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