Former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler says an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate him should serve as a “wake-up call” for democracies around the world to combat transnational repression and violence by Iran and other hostile actors.

In an interview with Global News, Cotler, a vocal critic of the Iranian regime, said he was informed by his RCMP security detail late last month they had received “information of an imminent assassination attempt within the next 48 hours” while he was in Montreal to attend an event marking the 60th anniversary of his law class at McGill University.

“My security was intensified for those next 48 hours,” he said. His security was then lowered from the “highest level” several days ago, he added, though it’s unclear to him what changed.

“I then read — I have not been told — I then read that two suspects may have been apprehended.”

The Globe and Mail first reported on the alleged plot against Cotler on Monday, and that a source said law enforcement was aware of two suspects but it was not clear if they were arrested or fled the country. The report said Cotler was advised last week that the threat against him had been “significantly lowered.”

1:26 Canadian government working ‘many years’ to list Iran’s IRGC as terrorist organization: Trudeau

Cotler has been under 24-hour RCMP protection since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, which receives backing from Iran. He told Global News he was first informed of an “imminent and lethal threat on my life” upon arriving in Montreal from a trip to Washington, D.C., with his wife in November 2023, and his security detail began “immediately” afterward.

“The protection I’ve had has been exemplary,” he said.

“They accompany me wherever I go. Even if I go to the barber shop or if I go for my medical treatment under dialysis, they are with me all the time.”

When he later learned the threat came from Iran, he said he wasn’t surprised, given his years-long advocacy for Iranian human rights and criticism of the Iranian regime.

He began lobbying the international community 15 years ago to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity. The Canadian government did so in June, following months of mounting political pressure.

Cotler said he’s “noticed a pattern” of increased alleged assassination plots against Iranian dissidents and western political critics of the regime on foreign soil, alongside a crackdown on dissent at home, including executions and abductions of dual nationals back to Iran.

“You have really a confluence of intensified domestic repression, intensified transnational repression, the phenomenon of assassinations as part of that transnational repression and the compelling and urgent need for the community of democracies to hold the Iranian regime to account,” he said.

“At the same time, as we express our support and solidarity with the Iranian people that are under increased assault.”

1:35 FBI thwarts alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Trump

U.S. intelligence agencies saw increased Iranian death threats against U.S. president-elect Donald Trump during his campaign this year, and the U.S. Justice Department has indicted multiple alleged hired assassins who prosecutors say were tasked to carry out Iranian plots to kill Trump.

Earlier this month, an unsealed U.S. indictment revealed two men were allegedly recruited by an IRGC contact to follow and kill prominent Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who has endured multiple Iranian murder-for-hire plots foiled by law enforcement. The indictment alleged that same IRGC contact had been tasked with planning an assassination plot against Trump ahead of the U.S. election.

Cotler said the alleged plots against Alinejad, who he called a friend and colleague, and himself are part of the increasing pattern of repression against critics of Iran.

Trump has taken a hardline stance against Iran and earned the regime’s ire after his first administration carried out a strike that killed IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in early 2020.

Cotler said he expects Trump to continue that approach when he returns to the White House next year, though he noted the incoming president is “unpredictable.”

“If the past is prologue, we might see intensified sanctions again the Iranian regime, and I think we’ll find an intensified response to hold the Iranian regime accountable,” he said.

1:47 Netanyahu, Trump see ‘eye-to-eye’ on Iran: Israeli PM

He hopes Canada and other countries follow suit and make transnational repression and assassinations a top priority at next year’s G7 summit, which Canada is hosting.

Canada has been facing growing allegations of foreign interference from not just Iran but also China, Russia and India. The government has been vocal about alleged ties between New Delhi and Indian consular officials in Canada and recent murder-for-hire plots against Sikh nationalists on Canadian soil, including the assassination last year of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia.

Iran has been accused of hiring Hells Angels members in Canada to carry out killings, and immigration officials have found 16 senior Iranian regime members illegally living in Canada to date.

Cotler called for a separate independent government agency to combat cases of foreign interference and repression abroad.

“I see this as a phenomenon not related to me personally, but to the larger threatening concern of transnational repression and assassination,” he said.

“This has to be seen as a wake-up call for the community of democracies because this is a direct threat to our security, to our democracy and to our human rights.”

Just two days after being arrested over an allegation of sexual assault, the eldest son of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been accused of a second rape.

At a detention hearing at Oslo District Court this week, police prosecutor Andreas Kruszewski requested that Marius Borg Høiby, 27, remain in custody for an additional two weeks as another alleged rape had been reported.

“The reason for this request is that we have uncovered another rape case overnight and this morning. This was identified in the investigative material,” Oslo police said in a statement to CNN on Thursday.

“The case involves sexual activity, not intercourse, with a woman who was incapable of resisting the act. This means that we are now investigating two rape cases involving Marius Borg Høiby.”

The judge in the case ordered one week of remand for the embattled member of Norway’s royal family.

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“Marius is facing serious accusations, which the police and the judiciary will deal with… I am convinced they will do a good job,” Prince Haakon, heir to the throne and Borg Høiby’s stepfather, told public broadcaster NRK before the detention order.

“We as a family and as parents have, of course, been very concerned that Marius should get help.”

Earlier this week, the Oslo police announced that Borg Høiby was arrested on Monday on suspicion of rape, after expanding the charges against him.

In a statement issued on Nov. 19, and translated into English, authorities said he was arrested on suspicion of violating the criminal code “which concerns sexual intercourse with someone who is unconscious or for other reasons unable to resist the act.”

“What police can say about the rape is that it concerns a sexual act without intercourse. The victim is said to have been unable to resist the act,” it continued.

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NRK reports that Borg Høiby has denied criminal guilt in both alleged rapes.

In addition to the recent charges, in the past three months he has also been charged with one count of “abuse in close relationships,” violating a restraining order and driving without a valid driver’s licence, police said Tuesday in a press release.

In details provided by police, they say Borg Høiby was taken into custody on Aug. 4, after an incident at the Oslo apartment of a woman he was in a relationship with. Police say they found a knife stuck into one of the walls of the woman’s bedroom and he was accused of causing her bodily harm.

He apologized for the events leading up to his August arrest in a statement to NRK at the time, blaming it on “being intoxicated with alcohol and cocaine after an argument” and “several mental illnesses” for which he planned to “resume treatment.”

The following month he was arrested for violating a restraining order.

Police say that during Monday’s arrest, he was in a car with August’s accuser. They clarified that Monday’s charge is an accuser from a separate incident.

It’s the latest in a long string of scandals and alleged mistreatment of women for Borg Høiby; he has previously been charged with abuse against two ex-girlfriends, as well as with threatening the life of a man.

0:31 Norway’s Princess Märtha Louise weds self-proclaimed US shaman

That could present both vulnerabilities and opportunities for Canada, which has been under increased pressure to meet its defence spending commitments, those experts add. That pressure is expected to build further under a new Trump administration, whose representative to NATO is a relative newcomer to the diplomatic scene fully aligned with his president’s worldview.

“Appointing a loyalist with limited foreign policy experience and expertise might signal an intention (by Trump) to keep pushing his more confrontational and unilateral agenda,” Erika Simpson, an associate professor of international relations at Western University, told Global News in an email.

If Whitaker is confirmed, Simpson said he may bring “more hardline rhetoric, pressure tactics, America First tactics that strain the alliance’s norms of consensus and cooperation.”

In a social media post after Trump’s announcement Wednesday, Whitaker said he “look(s) forward to strengthening relationships with our NATO Allies and standing firm in the face of threats to Peace and Stability.”

2:16 NATO faces uncertain future as it gets set to mark its 75th anniversary

Whitaker is a former U.S. attorney in Iowa and served as acting attorney general between November 2018 and February 2019 as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference was drawing to a close. He had been chief of staff to Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, before being picked to replace his boss after Sessions was fired over his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

Whitaker has since been a vocal critic of the U.S. Justice Department he once led, particularly in defending Trump against the four criminal indictments against him. He has little foreign policy or national security experience, making him a relative unknown to many in U.S. security circles.

His nomination as NATO ambassador will still need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. If approved, it will break a precedent under previous presidents of ambassadors with years of diplomatic, political or military credentials.

But David Welch, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo who studies foreign policy, says Whitaker’s lack of apparent qualifications for the job “fits a pattern” with Trump’s cabinet nominations that prioritize “patronage” and people “he thinks he can control.”

“He’s not in a position to give Trump qualified advice about NATO matters,” he said in an interview. “That would be a key function for the NATO ambassador to report back with advice to the leader. And he’s just not going to be able to do that.”

Trump’s first NATO ambassador, former U.S. senator from Texas Kay Bailey Hutchison, was a defender of the alliance during and after her tenure, including the necessity of U.S. leadership within it. Although she had no diplomatic experience, she was heavily involved in foreign policy matters in the Senate.

Trump has for years taken aim at NATO and members that don’t meet the alliance’s benchmark of spending at least two per cent of GDP on defence. Earlier this year, Trump said that, when he was president, he warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are “delinquent.”

Former Trump administration officials, including his one-time national security advisor John Bolton, have said Trump may push to withdraw the U.S. from the alliance.

9:40 ‘He’s deadly serious’: John Bolton on Trump’s warning to NATO allies

Whitaker’s appointment at the very least suggests Trump “will be changing (America’s) commitment to NATO,” Steven Lamy, professor emeritus of international relations at the University of Southern California, said in an email.

“Whitaker is not appointed to lead a renewed commitment to NATO and Ukraine,” he wrote. “Trump does not like the spending and, more importantly, the Article 5 commitment” to mutual defence in the event of an attack on any member.

In a Fox News interview during the 2019 NATO summit, Whitaker criticized alliance members that have “taken advantage of the United States” by not meeting the NATO benchmark, which he said has allowed those countries to “support socialized medicine and other experiments.”

Although he recognized that the U.S., as the major democratic military superpower, is “always going to have to spend more than our fair share to make sure democracy and freedom is defended worldwide, at the same time that doesn’t mean that the people we have aligned with should get to sort of ride on our coattails.”

He said Trump, who was president at the time, was “implementing that vision” within the alliance.

NATO says 23 member countries are currently meeting the two per cent GDP target, up from just three in 2014. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has spurred additional military spending by many European members, and Sweden and Finland both joined the pact in the wake of the war.

Biden has taken credit for pushing allies to increase their defence spending, but so has Trump.

2:16 NATO chief Stoltenberg urges Canada to meet defence spending goal

The U.S. has long outspent the NATO benchmark and currently spends 3.38 per cent of its GDP on defence.

Canada is one of just eight members not meeting the two per cent threshold. Its updated defence policy forecasts spending will rise from 1.37 per cent of GDP currently to 1.76 per cent by 2030.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed this year Canada’s defence spending will hit two per cent by 2032, although the parliamentary budget officer last month said the government’s plan for achieving that is unclear.

While that could cause friction with NATO and a future Ambassador Whitaker, Welch said Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, was a qualified choice who could help ease diplomatic pain points between the two countries.

If Whitaker is confirmed and pushes Trump’s tactics, Simpson said it will require strong pushback from NATO members, she said.

“Canada has long valued the alliance’s established processes and diplomatic decorum so I would hope we would see polite feedback from Canada as a founding NATO ally and not too many ‘I am sorry’s,” she wrote.

Canada’s environment and climate change minister was critical of Azerbaijani leadership at the United Nations climate summit as tense negotiations on a new finance deal came down to the wire.

Steven Guilbeault, speaking late Thursday, said he had so far been “disappointed” by the talks hosted by Azerbaijan, adding that time was “rapidly running out.”

With the conference known as COP29 stretching into overtime, negotiators are still hashing out how much money wealthier — and historically higher-emitting — countries will pledge to their developing counterparts in the fight against global warming.

The latest draft negotiating text released Friday pledged $250 billion by 2035, more than double the previous goal set 15 years ago, but less than a quarter of what developing countries requested.

Catherine Abreu, a leading Canadian climate policy analyst, called it a “lowest common denominator offering.”

Speaking Friday from the conference in Baku, Abreu said developing countries such as Canada must speak up “really quickly” in order make the deal more ambitious.

Several independent experts have suggested developing countries may need upwards of $1 trillion to help them transition away from fossil fuels, adapt to expected climate effects and pay for damages already caused by extreme weather.

6:29 What’s at stake at the COP29 global climate summit

On Thursday, Guilbeault said Canada “certainly doesn’t debate that we need to get to something around $1 trillion by 2030.”

“The question is how. It’s not going to be all public money. It’s not happening,” he said in an interview Thursday evening.

Guilbeault was critical of Azerbaijan for tabling negotiating texts earlier in the week that failed to acknowledge previous international agreements to reduce fossil-fuel dependency and scale up energy efficiency.

“These are things that we’ve already agreed to,” he said. “These should be no-brainers.”

The previous climate finance goal, agreed to in 2009, saw countries pledge $100 billion annually by 2020. That goal was met two years late, and countries agreed to come up with a new target by 2025, setting up COP29 as a forum to hammer out the details.

Guilbeault said that fixating on a dollar figure cannot come at the expense of making that money more transparent and more accessible to developing countries.

Canada has also pushed for China and Saudi Arabia to be among the countries added to the list of climate finance donor nations, in recognition of both their growing economies and their share of emissions.

3:01 COP29: Greta Thunberg scorns Azerbaijan host as ‘authoritarian petro-state’

“A number was put forward in Copenhagen in 2009 without a lot of thinking about the overall architecture of what a good financial package would look like,” he said.

“This idea that a number will fix everything — been there, done that, got the T-shirt, didn’t work.”

Julie Segal, with Environmental Defence, said the new $250 billion proposal is “stingy” and would be “basically the status quo, if not less,” once it is adjusted for inflation.

“This current proposal from wealthy countries has so many holes and is unacceptable relative to the needs,” she said in an interview Friday.

Caroline Brouillette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, said she has never attended UN climate negotiations so clouded in uncertainty, so close to their deadline.

“Given the fact that we are during the hottest year on record and the crucial nature of this COP for climate multilateralism as a whole, (that) is a really scary and dangerous place to be,” she said in an interview from Azerbaijan late Thursday.

— With files from The Associated Press. 

A second Australian teenager who fell critically ill after drinking tainted alcohol in Laos has died in a hospital in Bangkok, her family said Friday, bringing the death toll in the mass poisoning of foreign tourists to six.

Holly Bowles, 19, had been in critical condition on life support following the poisoning in Laos more than a week ago.

“We are so sad to say that our beautiful girl Holly is now at peace,” her family said in a statement sent to Australian Network 10 and other Australian media. “We find comfort and solace in knowing that Holly brought so much joy and happiness to so many people.”

An officer at Vang Vieng’s Tourism Police office, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press on Friday that a “number of people” had been detained in the case but that no charges have yet been filed. Staff at the Nana Backpacker Hostel, which was still operating but not accepting new guests, confirmed that the manager and owner were among those taken in for questioning.

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Tourist police offices are common in Southeast Asia and are set up specifically to help with incidents involving tourists and other foreigners.

The U.S. State Department on Friday issued a health alert for citizens traveling in Laos, warning of “suspected methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng, possibly through the consumption of methanol-laced alcoholic drinks,” following similar alerts from other countries whose citizens were involved.

Australia’s prime minister announced Thursday that a 19-year-old citizen, Bianca Jones, had died in a Thai hospital where she had been evacuated for emergency treatment, and that her friend — Bowles — remained in a hospital “fighting for her life.” A 28-year-old British woman, Simone White, also died from suspected methanol poisoning in Laos, the British Foreign Office said.

An American and two Danish tourists also died, though specifics about the causes of death have not been released.

New Zealand’s Foreign Ministry said one of its citizens was sickened in Laos and was a possible victim of methanol poisoning.

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Laos is a one-party communist state with no organized opposition and the government keeps a tight lid on information. In this case, officials have released almost no details.

The Foreign Ministry has refused to comment, and in Vang Vieng the small hospital where some of the victims are believed to have been treated initially referred all questions to the town’s health office on the hospital grounds. The town health officials refused to comment, saying they lacked proper permission.

Methanol is sometimes added to mixed drinks at disreputable bars as a cheaper alternative to ethanol, but can cause severe poisoning or death. It is also a byproduct of poorly distilled homebrew liquor, and could have found its way into bar drinks inadvertently.

Landlocked Laos is one of Southeast Asia’s poorest nations and a popular tourist destination. Vang Vieng is particularly popular among backpackers seeking partying and adventure sports.

Neil Farmiloe, a New Zealander who owns the Kiwi Kitchen restaurant in town, said a lot of his customers were very worried about the incident.

“I think it’s never happened before, so it is hopefully just a one-off incident,” said Farmiloe, who has lived in Vang Vieng for 20 years. “It’s very sad all around. I’m sure nobody intended to cause injury, but it’s happened.”

The two 19-year-old Australian women who have both now died fell ill on Nov. 13 following a night out drinking with a group.

They failed to check out from the Nana Backpacker Hostel as planned and were found sick in their room and then taken to Thailand for emergency treatment.

Thai authorities confirmed that Jones had died by “brain swelling due to high levels of methanol found in her system.”

Duong Duc Toan, the manager of the Nana Backpacker Hostel, told the AP the day before he was detained that the two women had joined other guests for free shots of Laotian vodka before heading elsewhere and returning in the early hours of the morning.

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Rising reported from Bangkok.