Canada’s foreign minister says India’s remaining diplomats are on notice not to harm Canadians

TORONTO (AP) — Canada’s foreign minister said Friday that India’s remaining diplomats in the country are “clearly on notice” not to endanger Canadian lives after New Delhi’s top envoy in Canada was named a person of interest in the assassination of a Sikh activist.

India’s high commissioner was expelled Monday along with five other diplomats, prompting Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly to compare India to Russia, saying Canada’s national police force has linked Indian diplomats to homicides, death threats and intimidation in Canada

Joly said Friday that Canada won’t tolerate foreign diplomats putting the lives of Canadians at risk.

“We’ve never seen that in our history. That level of transnational repression cannot happen on Canadian soil. We’ve seen it elsewhere in Europe. Russia has done that in Germany and the U.K. and we needed to stand firm on this issue,” she said in Montreal.

Asked if other Indian diplomats will be expelled, Joly said: “They are clearly on notice. Six of them have been expelled including the high commissioner in Ottawa. Others were mainly from Toronto and Vancouver and clearly we won’t tolerate any diplomats that are in contravention of the Vienna convention.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police went public this week with allegations that Indian diplomats were targeting Sikh separatists in Canada by sharing information about them with their government back home. They said top Indian officials were then passing that information along to Indian organized crime groups who were targeting the activists, who are Canadian citizens, with drive-by shootings, extortions and even murder.

India, for its part, has rejected the Canadian accusations as absurd, and its foreign ministry