Canadian authorities boasted Monday afternoon that, working in concert with the FBI and other US national security agencies, they had broken up a terrorist conspiracy involving an Iranian-based al-Qaeda cell. The announcement, made at a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) press conference, came just as the House of Commons was set to debate new anti-terrorism legislation that would give the state draconian new powers.

Two men, 30 year-old Chiheb Esseghaier, and 35 year-old, Raed Jaser, have since been charged with grave terrorist offences—charges that they vehemently deny. Yet the RCMP and Stephen Harper’s Conservative government have provided virtually no information about the alleged plot, beyond saying that the men carried out surveillance of Toronto’s railway network with a view to bombing or derailing a New York-bound passenger train.

The little that has been revealed leaves no doubt that the timing of the arrests was a calculated political decision, made in close consultation with the highest levels of the US government, and with the aim of stampeding the public on both sides of the border into accepting police-state measures.

At Monday’s press conference, the RCMP conceded that there had never been an imminent threat of a terrorist attack or even a definite plan for an attack, and that Esseghaier and Jaser have long been in the police’s sights.

It was subsequently revealed that the two alleged terrorist plotters have been under heavy state surveillance since last August—that is, for the past eight months—and that their alleged crimes date back to last year.

The charges presented by the Crown in court on Tuesday state that all but one of the offenses the two men allegedly committed—including conspiracy to commit murder—occurred in 2012 and most of them between April and September of last year. The lone exception is a charge against Esseghaier of participating in a terrorist group.

Neither the police nor government have given any reason as to why, after allowing the accused to remain at large for months, they were suddenly arrested Monday afternoon and in a very high-profile manner. Esseghaier was apprehended while eating at a McDonald’s outlet in Montreal’s main train station; scores of police armed with rifles and accompanied by search-dogs descended on Jaser’s workplace in the Toronto borough of North York.

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