Canadian passports used by criminals, spies, terrorists

The Canadian passport has long been used by Russian spies and Israeli intelligence assassination teams, as well as some infamous criminals:

1940: Spaniard Ramon Mercader del Rio murdered Leon Trotsky in Mexico City after moving around Mexico undetected using a Canadian passport in the name of Frank Jacson.

1961: Gordon Lonsdale, Russian spy, used a false Canadian passport for his espionage activities, as did his associates in the British naval espionage case, the American-born couple Helen and Peter Kroger.

1968: James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., avoided a two-month-long international manhunt until he was caught at Heathrow Airport with a Canadian passport he had ordered at a Toronto travel agency.

1999: Ahmed Ressam, the Millennium Bomber, was caught at the border in Washington State on his way to blow up the Los Angeles airport with a Canadian passport in the name of Benni Antoine Noris. It turned out he had two Canadian passports ordered by a notorious passport procurer, a Cameroonian named Leo Nkounga, who had secured 35 clean Canadian passports for mostly Middle Eastern men just prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.