Police in Australia and Canada arrested four people accused of trying to extort an Iraqi politician, after what was described on Wednesday as a one-year intimidation campaign.
Double attacks were launched after a series of attacks on a Sydney home and online extortion attempts related to an address in Canada.
The target was the family of a “very experienced politician” who has dual Australian and Iraqi citizenship and “spends almost all of his time in Iraq,” said Australian police.
Australian investigators were able to link the social media accounts used in the case to the city of Edmonton in western Canada, his police force said.
The attacks are believed to have started in December 2019, when masked and armed assailants broke into a house in western Sydney, attacking a 16-year-old boy and stealing money.
Months later, shots were fired at the house while two adults, two teenagers and a child were inside. A window was broken in a separate incident.
Earlier this month, the front porch was set on fire in the dead of night and a threatening note was left outside.
Edmonton police said they had arrested a man, Ghazi Shanta, 33, and a woman, Diana Kadri, 32, who are accused of extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion.
Two men in their 20s were also arrested in Sydney.
“Over that time, the family has received numerous demands for money and threats to their well-being through social media and letters left at their home,” said Australian police.
The Australian media named the member of parliament Ahmed Assadi – a leading figure in Hashed al-Shaabi, a powerful state-sponsored paramilitary network formed by majority Shi’ite armed groups.
Police have not confirmed the man’s identity.
“With the immediacy of today’s communication tools, it was critical for us to collaborate with the Australian police to make simultaneous arrests on opposite sides of the planet,” said Phil Hawkins, from the Cyber Crime Investigations Unit of the Edmonton force.
“The search warrants were executed without any problems and together we were able to place four suspects in two countries in custody without incident,” he said.
The unit became involved after an Interpol request from the Australian federal police.