Amid an escalating India-Canada diplomatic row, a top US diplomat in Canada, David Cohen, confirmed on Saturday the “shared intelligence among ‘Five Eyes’ partners” led Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make allegations against India in the killing of Khalistani militant Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Following Cohen’s comments, The New York Times cited sources to report that The United States – one of the ‘Five Eyes’ nations – provided Canada with intelligence after Nijjar was gunned down in June near Vancouver.
The Canadian allegations made by Trudeau on Monday, which India angrily rejected as “absurd” and “motivated,” have led to a fallout between the two nations – hitting the lowest in their relations in decades. (India Canada news LIVE updates)
What is ‘Five Eyes’ – the intelligence alliance?
1) The Five Eyes, founded in 1941, is an intelligence alliance comprising nations including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US.
2) These countries are parties to the multilateral UK-USA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.
3) These partner nations exchange a wide spectrum of intelligence within one of the world’s most tightly-knit multilateral agreements as part of the collaboration.
4) The Five Eyes agreement parties are “diverse societies, governed by rule of law and robust human rights and are bonded by a common language. These characteristics aid the partners in sharing information with one another to protect their shared national interests,” the Canadian government’s website states.
5) Following its origin, the agency later enlarged its core group to ‘Nine Eyes’ and 14 Eyes alliances as well, encompassing more countries as security partners. The ‘Nine Eyes’ group expands to cover the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Norway, whereas the 14 Eyes bloc further includes Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden.
