Toronto Police Officer Killed in Raid on Suspects in March Attack on United States Consulate — a Shooting US Prosecutors Allege Was Directed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Proxy Network

Slain officer Marc Pinizzotto was executing search warrants tied to the consulate shooting that a New York federal complaint links to Hizballah commander Mohammad Al-Saadi.

CANADA – A Toronto police officer was shot and killed early Thursday during a raid targeting suspects in the March shooting attack on the United States consulate in Toronto — an attack that federal prosecutors in New York allege was directed by a senior commander of Kata’ib Hizballah, the Iraqi proxy militia of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The officer was shot during an exchange of gunfire at a high-rise building in the early hours of the morning, the Toronto Police Service said. He was later pronounced dead in hospital.

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw identified the fallen officer as 43-year-old Marc Pinizzotto, an 18-year veteran of the force who served five years on the Toronto Police Emergency Task Force. Pinizzotto was part of a team executing search warrants on suspects believed to be linked to several shootings across the city, including the March attack on the consulate, which United States and Canadian authorities described at the time as a national security incident.

One suspect, identified as 19-year-old Zara Jabbi, remains at large and is considered armed and dangerous, Demkiw said. “I would ask anyone that would see him to call 9-1-1 immediately,” he said. A second suspect was shot in the exchange of gunfire and transported to hospital with life-threatening injuries. That suspect’s identity has not been released. Police did not specify what other shootings were under investigation in the warrants executed Thursday.

The consulate attack at the center of Thursday’s raid occurred on March 10, when two men fired at the front of the building before fleeing. No one inside was harmed; police said at the time the consulate building is highly fortified. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams were engaged, working with Toronto police and American partners including the FBI.

As The Bureau reported in May, a federal criminal complaint unsealed in the Southern District of New York alleges the consulate attack was the work of a terrorist network directed by Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a 32-year-old Iraqi citizen described by the FBI as a high-level Kata’ib Hizballah commander with direct personal ties to the late Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.

According to the complaint, Al-Saadi was captured on a wiretapped call on March 20 — ten days after two men emerged from a white Honda CR-V on University Avenue before dawn and fired multiple rounds at the fortified consulate — claiming “our people” were responsible for that shooting and for a separate attack on a Toronto synagogue he referred to obliquely as hitting “the Knesset.”

On the same recorded call, Al-Saadi made clear Canada remained a live operational priority for his network. “In Canada or America,” he told an FBI source, “if you can do anything . . . that would be . . . very, very important.”

The complaint alleges that since February 28 — the opening of the joint American-Israeli military campaign against Iran — Al-Saadi directed and promoted at least 18 terrorist attacks across Europe and two in Canada under the banner of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, a previously unknown group the FBI identifies as a front for Kata’ib Hizballah.

He financed strikes through cartel-style payments routed through currency exchange houses, with refunds built in if attacks failed to materialize. “In Europe we have our guys; even in America, for example the other day, and in Canada we have our guys,” he said, according to the complaint’s translation from Arabic. “But if you send the Mafia, they can pick a place of their choosing, at any money exchange. If they hit, then that’s good, but if they don’t, then I get my money back. This is how the deal is.”

Al-Saadi attempted to hire what he believed was a Mexican cartel operative to set fire to synagogues in New York, Los Angeles, and Arizona, and was arrested in Turkey, transferred to United States custody, and ordered detained pending trial in Manhattan federal court. He faces six federal counts, including conspiracy to provide material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations, and a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Canadian authorities have not publicly stated whether the suspects targeted in Thursday’s raids are connected to the network described in the New York complaint.

Pinizzotto’s death was acknowledged Thursday by United States Ambassador Pete Hoekstra at a Canada-US trade conference in downtown Toronto. “I don’t know if you’re all aware of it, but a Toronto policeman was killed, I believe, overnight in an investigation that may be linked to the United States,” Hoekstra told attendees. “Our thoughts, our prayers are with the family of the police person who was killed.”

Hoekstra added that the incident is an “example of the close cooperation that we have in law enforcement between the two countries, how we work together and the risks involved in those types of activities.”