Montreal police stated on Thursday that five people apprehended last week in possession of incendiary materials may have planned a violent act in connection with Israel’s war against terrorist forces in the Middle East.
Police spokesperson Manuel Couture said that law enforcement was probing whether the suspects intended to target nearby synagogues, Canadian media reported.
“The big investigation is ongoing. We are looking at what they were doing in these neighborhoods and what building was being targeted, because what we saw in the car was clearly to start a fire somewhere,” Couture was quoted as saying.
Around 2 a.m. (the night between Tuesday and Wednesday), a security officer in the city of Côte-St-Luc spotted a vehicle with suspicious occupants parked near a synagogue and called the police.
Police officers came to the scene and arrested the two occupants, ages 22 and 20, having found incendiary materials in the vehicle.
A “suspicious item” was later found near the synagogue on Mackle Rd., according to the Montreal Gazette.
Fifteen minutes earlier, police officers stopped another vehicle with three minors, two 17-year-olds and a 16-year-old, in the Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough and found in it “incendiary items” as well, the Gazette reported.
The suspected minors were released from custody with a promise to appear in court.
The city of Côte-St-Luc released a statement saying that it has increased security efforts in the coming days in the wake of the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught in southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were brutally murdered and 251 more were kidnapped into the Gaza Strip.
The police stated that officers will be “particularly visible” throughout Montreal in the next several days until Oct. 7.
In September, a Montreal park was dedicated to the memory of Alexandre Look, one of eight Canadians among the 1,200 people murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7.
“This place which will bear Alex’s name will serve as a beacon of hope and remembrance,” Raquel Ohnona Look, Alex’s mother, told the dozens who assembled in the Montreal suburb of Côte-Saint-Luc.
