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On Wednesday, Canadian and Australian authorities announced that they had arrested four people, two of them residents of Canada and the other two in Australia, on suspicion of attempting to blackmail an Iraqi legislator who also possesses Australian citizenship, and of carrying out a campaign of terror that lasted more than a year.
The arrests took place in the Australian cities of Sydney and Edmonton, in the west of the country, as part of an investigation that was carried out in coordination between the security forces of both countries after a series of attacks against a house in Sydney, and an attempted blackmail via the Internet from Canada.
The Australian police said these crimes were targeting the family of an anonymous “senior Iraqi political official”, saying only that he has two Australian and Iraqi nationalities and “resides most of the time in Iraq.”
According to Australian media, this politician is Representative Ahmed Al-Asadi, leader of the “People’s Mobilization Authority”, a coalition of armed factions loyal to Iran that has become part of the Iraqi security system.
According to Australian authorities, the series of attacks began in December 2019 when gunmen broke into a Sydney home, assaulted a 16-year-old boy and stole money.
A few months later, the house, which housed two adults and three children, was shot at.
“During this time, the family received numerous requests for money and threats to their safety, via social media and through messages sent to their home,” Australian police said in a statement.
For their part, Canadian police said investigations showed the source of the extortion attempts was an address in Alberta.
Edmonton police said they had arrested a man named Ghazi Shanta (33 years old) and a woman named Diana Qadri (32 years old), who had been charged with extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion.
In Australia, security forces detained two young men, aged 22 and 24, on Wednesday.
