US envoy confirms Canada got intelligence from Five Eyes partners before Trudeau went public

Toronto: Admitting for the first time, a top United States diplomat has confirmed that there was “shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners” that had prompted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s offensive allegation about Indian agents’ involvement in the killing of a Khalistani extremist on Canadian soil, according to a media report on Saturday.

There was “shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners” that informed Trudeau’s public allegation of a “potential” link between the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen, CTV News Channel, Canada’s 24-hour all-news network, reported quoting the US

Ambassador to Canada David Cohen.

Five Eyes’ network is an intelligence alliance consisting of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

It is both surveillance-based and signals intelligence (SIGINT).

Trudeau had on September 18 made an explosive allegation of the “potential” involvement of Indian agents in the killing of Khalistani extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, in Surrey in British Columbia on June 18.

India has rejected Trudeau’s allegations as “absurd” and “motivated.”

It also expelled a senior Canadian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move to Ottawa’s expulsion of an Indian official over the case.