What’s Happening
A police officer of the Alberta Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has received three charges in connection to an ongoing investigation, which accuses the officer of leaking information to the Rwandan government.
Constable Eli Ndatuje has been charged with with breach of trust, unauthorized use of a computer and breach of trust with respect to safeguarded information, with an investigation by the RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team presently carrying out an investigation into the incident.
The RCMP stated that Ndatuje leaked “non-top secret RCMP records systems” in order to assist a “foreign actor”, which they said was Rwanda.
Ndatuje was arrested on February 10th, and is now awaiting his first court appearance at the city of Calgary’s Provincial Court on March 11th. Since his initial arrest he has been released, however his passport was confiscated, and he was ordered to stay within Alberta and report for fingerprinting. Ndatuje was born in Uganda, and moved to Canada when he was 14. He is of Rwandan descent.
The incident apparently occurred on April 23rd, 2022. It is unclear exactly what information was leaked, and how the RCMP caught wind of the leak nearly two years after its occurrence.
Recent Interference Incidents
Ndatuje’s charging comes a week after Ontario’s Superior Court sentenced former high ranking RCMP intelligence official Cameron Ortis to 14 years in prison for leaking information to four individuals, with varying backgrounds.
Ortis and Ndatuje’s cases have highlighted a wider problem in Canada regarding foreign interference. A 2023 series of leaked intelligence reports suggested that China had been attempting to “meddle” in Canadian elections.
In September of 2023, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that there was “credible information” linking the Indian government to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist who was assassinated in British Columbia.
Nijjar was killed in what appeared to be a larger plot, according to US prosecutors, orchestrated by an Indian man named Nikhil Gupta. Gupta was arrested by US authorities and is accused of planning to assassinate at least four different political activists across North America.