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'The whole ring is unwinding': Gunmen-for-hire who targeted U.S. Consulate linked to earlier shootings, source says
An investigation into shootings at GFL Environmental Inc. facilities led to the alleged shooters-for-hire who targeted Toronto’s U.S. Consulate earlier this spring and are suspected of being involved in Thursday’s shooting death of a Toronto police officer, a source said Friday.
Veteran Toronto Police Service Constable Marc Pinizzotto, a 43-year-old member of the force’s Emergency Task Force, died Thursday while executing an early morning search warrant in the case. Police have said Nicholas Bennett, 19, who was wounded in Thursday’s raid, will face a first-degree murder charge in connection to Pinizzotto’s death. Investigators were still searching Friday for 19-year-old Zara Jabbi, another suspect wanted in connection with the consulate attack.
“They get paid to do it; they don’t care what they shoot,” said a source close to the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it’s an active police investigation.
“This is the bottom of the barrel.”
An investigation into shootings at GFL facilities and the Toronto home of at least one of the company’s executives in recent years led to Thursday’s early morning search at an apartment complex north of Black Creek Drive and Eglinton Avenue West, said the source.
“Because of a couple of arrests in the GFL investigation, they had information in the individuals’ phones that linked them to the consulate,” said the source.
Texts and videos in the phones of those arrested in the GFL investigation showed the shooters were paid between $600 and $800 each to target buildings, including Toronto’s U.S. Consulate, this past March, said the source.
“The whole ring is unwinding,” said the source.
“This is just the beginning of a long investigation. They’re starting at the bottom and working their way to the top.”
Those ordering the shootings directed the shooters-for-hire where to pick up stolen cars to carry out the attacks, said the source. “They’re videoing (the shootings) on their phone because the only way they get paid is to take a video.”
The attacks haven’t been aimed directly at people, said the source. “They’re just raising havoc. They don’t even know what they’re doing. They’re given an address and told to go shoot this address.”
Global News obtained a warrant Friday that showed Jabbi, who police warned Thursday is armed and dangerous, was allegedly involved in the theft of a vehicle before shooting at the consulate on University Avenue.
A Toronto Police Service spokesperson couldn’t confirm Friday that the investigation is looking at a network of shooters for hire that also targeted GFL buildings.
U.S. prosecutors suspect the consulate attack was directed by Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, who is allegedly commander of an Iraqi militia with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), an Iranian military body.
An unsealed criminal complaint reported a wiretapped conversation with al-Saadi shortly after the March 10 shooting, claiming “our people” were responsible for the attack as well as another one on “the Knesset,” which appears to be a reference to a Toronto synagogue that was fired on around the same time.
“On behalf of the Embassy of Israel in Canada I express my deepest condolences to the family, loved ones and colleagues of Police Constable Marc Pinizzotto, who was killed in the line of duty while serving the community and investigating the shootings at multiple Toronto Synagogues and the U.S. Consulate,” Israel’s ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed said in an X post on Friday.
Toronto police have not confirmed whether the raid Thursday morning was tied to any synagogue shootings or whether any of the suspects had ties to Iran or the IRGC.
“We know that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has been using proxies, i.e. cut-outs or guns for hire, right across Western Europe,” said Phil Gurski, a former senior strategic analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) from 2001-2013, specializing in Al Qaeda and Islamic State-inspired violent extremism and radicalization.
“They can use these wankers, pay them not very much money and say we want you to do X, Y, or Z. These guys they’re hiring have no ideology. They have no skin in the game.”
The consulate shooting, “at first blush,” appears to be tied to “an actual state sponsor, that is the IRGC in Iran,” Gurski said. “We’ve never really seen that before, not to the best of my knowledge, and I worked on Iran at CSIS. I worked on jihadis at CSIS. I don’t recall a single event where we can definitively say Iran paid this guy X amount of money to do this.”
Hiring shooters is cheap and gives those doing the hiring “a level of plausible deniability,” Gurski said.
That allows the Iranians to say “he’s not ours. He’s just some guy that’s mad about Palestine or mad at (U.S. President Donald) Trump or mad at Jews and he carried this out independently.”
Proving an Iranian link could be very difficult, he said.
If the IRGC did order the consulate shooting, “it’s a brilliant plan by the Iranians to make their presence known,” Gurski said.
“If there’s something there, then I think it does point to a significant scale-up in Canada as to Iranian state activity on our soil.”
But Daniel Stanton, who served for 32 years with CSIS, including a dozen years as an executive manager in operations, cautioned Friday that the consulate shooting could have been organized by someone who’s upset over the U.S. war with Iran, versus the “probably less likely” option that the attacks are being organized by Iran.
“What would the state of Iran get by expending resources and time to do these types of activities in Toronto?” said Stanton, now the director of the National Security Program at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute.
“What’s the impact versus going to the United States and making trouble for Donald Trump if they had a real terrorist incident?”
The March 10 early morning attack on Toronto’s U.S. Consulate wasn’t “exactly Jason Bourne activity,” Stanton said. “It does sound a little amateurish,” he said. “We need a little bit more data before we pin this on Iran.”
Councillor Mike Colle, who represents Eglinton-Lawrence, said Friday that a link to Iran is plausible in the consulate shootings, as well as shootings that targeted Jewish establishments in Toronto.
“They find these guys that will do anything for a few bucks,” said Colle, the deputy mayor for North York.
“They say here’s the address: go shoot this place up. There are all kinds of desperate people out there with guns and they basically make their money by intimidating people or shooting up people.”
He’s calling for more help to deal with the problem.
“This is way beyond just the Toronto Police, who have been stretched to the limit,” Colle said.
“If we really want to be serious about this, we need a boots-on-the-ground visible task force with the RCMP, OPP and Toronto Police all working together on a daily basis,” he said.
“It would also send a signal to these petty criminals and the agents that are here from Iran that Canada is taking this very, very seriously.”
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