Canadian intelligence scandal casts shadow on Five Eyes

Canadian intelligence officer was the central figure in a terror network.

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Earlier this month, the Canadian government sought 30 years’ imprisonment for one of their own, Cameron Ortis—a former directorranked official with the National Intelligence Coordination Unit of RCMP—who in 2023 was found guilty of leaking secret information to members of an international terror network.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is equivalent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States.

The state prosecutor, Judy Kliewer, while seeking the prison sentence for Ortis, told an Ottawa courtroom that “His conduct betrayed the RCMP. It betrayed the Five Eyes alliance.”

As per the case documents, Ortis emerged as a central figure in the Altaf Khanani criminal network.

Khanani, a Pakistani national, has been on the radar of the US agencies since at least 2008 for laundering illicit funds for organized crime and terrorist outfits, including Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In September 2014, the Five Eyes alliance—an intelligence sharing network made up of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—identified Khanani as a common threat and decided to work together to take him down.

As a part of their investigation, the Canadian authorities, in which Ortis was a central figure, launched “Project Oryx” to investigate the agents of Khanani who were active in Canada. At least three businessmen were identified in this secret operation—Salim Henareh, Muhammad Ashraf and Farzam Mehdizadeh.