Terror threats had airports on high alert
Response to claim of biological weapon on plane that landed in Montreal revealed
Federal authorities were on high alert last year after receiving rare back-to-back threats directed at an international flight and several Canadian airports, newly released records show.
Ultimately, no attacks were carried out, but the threats — whose nature one border official termed “not a common occurrence” — were taken so seriously, they prompted nationwide law-enforcement bulletins and notifications to senior government officials.
It all began Jan. 6, 2012, when authorities at Trudeau international airport were told that someone aboard a Royal Jordanian flight had a biological weapon, according to records obtained under access to information laws.
An emergency notification issued by the Canada Border Services Agency’s border operations centre indicated the flight was not allowed to proceed to the gate and was under “quarantine.”
All luggage had to be taken off the plane and examined before the passengers could get off.
Later that same day, the CBSA’s border operations centre issued another notification.
This one indicated the RCMP had received an email threatening airports in Vancouver, Toronto, Quebec, Edmonton and Ottawa.
“There is no link between this threat and the ongoing event at Trudeau Airport in Montreal,” it said.
The notice stated that district directors for each airport were being alerted to the threat and that further intelligence alerts and bulletins were being developed. The source of the threat was described as “unknown.”
“This event may impact CBSA Operations and Security at the Canadian airports in the 5 mentioned cities,” the notice stated.
“This event could have media implications.”
A related “CBSA Alert Bulletin” indicated that a “preliminary threat alert” had been issued by Transport Canada Aviation Security and urged CBSA employees to be vigilant.
Top officials, including RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson and Public Safety Minis- ter Vic Toews’s communications staff, were copied on the notifications.
The full text of the threatening email was redacted from the records provided to Postmedia News.
CBSA media representatives this week declined to discuss the letter’s contents.
“After thorough investigation by the CBSA and its law enforcement partners, no credible threat was found in either case,” CBSA spokeswoman Amitha Carnadin said in an email.
Ray Boisvert, a former as- sistant director at CSIS, said Thursday that airport and border officials likely field many smaller-scale threats on a daily basis and can probably make pretty quick assessments about their credibility.
But it’s probably “pretty rare” that they get such a wide-scale threat. Boisvert speculated that the emailed threat last year probably contained a level of specificity that caused officials to take this more seriously and to assign intelligence officers to the matter.