Canadians have been the targets – and sometimes the perpetrators – of terrorist attacks in the modern era. Here’s a brief look at some major events:
1985
June: Air India flight 182 is blown up off the coast of Ireland, killing 331 people, mostly Canadians. One person, Inderjit Singh Reyat, a militant Sikh nationalist, is convicted for manslaughter related to the attack.
2001
September: 24 Canadians are killed in the 9/11 attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the hijacked airliner that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
2004
March: Ottawa software engineer Momin Khawaja is arrested and charged with participating in an international plot to bomb locations in London, England on behalf of Islamic extremists. He is convicted in 2008 and given a life sentence.
2006
August: Eighteen men from the Toronto area are arrested and charged with various terrorist offences including attempting to assassinate the prime minister, blow up the Peace Tower and bomb the Toronto Stock Exchange. The group is linked to al-Qaeda. Eleven are eventually convicted of a number of crimes with sentences ranging from two-and-a-half years to life.
2009
October: Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Rana is arrested in Chicago by the FBI and charged with providing material support to the Pakistan militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. He is convicted in 2011 and in January, 2103, sentenced to 14 years in prison.
2010
August: Two Ottawa men, Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh and Misbhuddin Ahmed, and one man from London, Ont., Dr. Khurram Sher, are arrested and charged with participating in a terrorist group and conspiring to participate in acts of terror. The attacks were supposedly planned for Canada, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
2013
April: Ali Medlej and Xristos Katsiroubas, from the same high school in London, Ont., are identified as two insurgents who were killed in January during a terror attack on a gas plan in Algeria. A third friend, Aaron Yoon, is in jail in Mauritania serving a two-year sentence for terror-related offences. A fourth man from London, Mujahid Enderi, is also sought by police.
April 22: News reports indicate two people, one from Toronto and one from Montreal, have been arrested by the RCMP for a plot in the Toronto area targeting a Via Rail passenger train. The RCMP says they are not Canadian citizens.
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