OTTAWA — The Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Monday announced the arrest of two men who are accused of planning to derail a passenger train in an Al Qaeda-linked plot.
The police, saying the investigation was continuing, offered little in the way of details or evidence at a news conference in Toronto. Canadian politicians and government officials were similarly reticent.
Assistant Commissioner James Malizia said that the two suspects had received “direction and guidance” from “Al Qaeda elements living in Iran,” but that there was no evidence that the effort had been sponsored by the government of Iran.
He declined to explain how the link to Al Qaeda had been made.
The suspects were identified as Chiheb Esseghaier, 35, who has been living in Montreal, and Raed Jaser, 30, of Toronto. The police said the men were not Canadian citizens, but declined to identify their nationalities or to describe their immigration status in Canada.
Chief Superintendent Jennifer Strachan said the two men had studied train movements and rail lines in and around Toronto, and had been plotting to attack a train operated by Via Rail Canada, the government-owned rail system, within Canada.
The police declined to identify what train or train line the men had planned to target or to describe how the derailment was to have occurred. Via Rail, in conjunction with Amtrak, runs a train from Toronto to New York’s Penn Station.
The police emphasized that the public had never been in “imminent danger.” Officials said that the suspects had been under constant observation and that contingency plans had been made.
Little is known about the men. The Canadian Press news agency reported that Mr. Esseghaier studied at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec in 2008 and 2009, and had recently been doing graduate work in biology at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique in Montreal.
Both the police and David Jacobson, the United States ambassador to Canada, indicated that the F.B.I. and other American law enforcement and intelligence agencies were involved in the investigation. No one, however, offered any specifics about that involvement or indicated if the plot had a cross-border element.
“These arrests were the result of extensive cross-border cooperation, which is the hallmark of our relationship,” Mr. Jacobson said in a statement. “Dedicated professionals on both sides of the border brought these arrests to fruition.”
During the news conference, senior officers of the Mounted Police were asked repeatedly about the link to Iran, which seemed unusual. Iran is dominated by Shiites while Al Qaeda is a Sunni organization. But the United States has accused Iran of aiding Al Qaeda in the past.
The arrests were made shortly before Canada’s House of Commons began a debate on legislation that would expand the powers of police and intelligence agencies in suspected terrorism cases.
Early this month, the Mounted Police said two young Canadians from London, Ontario, had died in January while participating in an attack on a gas plant in Algeria. In 2006, the police arrested 18 people in and around Toronto who they said were part of a Qaeda-affiliated group that planned attacks in Canada. Eleven were convicted or pleaded guilty while charges against the remainder of the suspects were dropped.
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