Stickers and signs hang attached to a utility pole in London Ont. on June 15, 2021, near the site where four members of a family were killed. The trial of a man accused in their deaths is scheduled to start this week.Geoff Robins/The Canadian Press
There is an intersection in Ontario said to be a place where hate and fear destroyed life and love. Four members of a Canadian Muslim family were killed there by the driver of a pickup truck who allegedly used the vehicle as a weapon against them and their religion.
This week, the man charged in the 2021 horror at the intersection of Hyde Park and South Carriage roads in London will go on trial as prosecutors lay out evidence of four first-degree murder charges that the Crown argues also rank as terrorist acts. It’s the first time in Canada that prosecutors have taken such an approach before a jury, in terms of arguing that an apparent hate crime was motivated by terrorist ideology.
The Afzaal family was killed by an accelerating 2016 Dodge Ram pickup truck as they strolled on a sidewalk during a summer evening. Killed were grandmother Talat, 74; parents Salman and Madiha, in their 40s; and their daughter Yumnah, just 15 years old. Her nine-year-old brother survived the attack.
Police who pursued the pickup after the crash arrested a man allegedly wearing body armour and a helmet when the vehicle was stopped. “We believe that this was an intentional act and that the victims of this horrific incident were targeted because of their Islamic faith,” then-London police chief Steve Williams said at the time.
Charged is Nathaniel Veltman, now 22. Besides the four first-degree murder charges, he is also charged with attempted murder for the boy’s injuries. Prosecutors also contend that each of these charges simultaneously violated Canada’s terrorism laws. They are preparing to argue that the violence was “terrorist activity” that flowed from a political, religious or ideological purpose to intimidate other people.
Legal observers say the case against Mr. Veltman, which is anticipated to see jury selection begin Tuesday, now stands as a case study in how Canadian law enforcement is expanding the boundaries of terrorism prosecutions.
While Parliament introduced Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, there has only ever been one conviction in a case like Mr. Veltman’s before. Earlier this year, a Toronto teenager who subscribed to the misogynist incel ideology made a surprise guilty plea in a judge-alone hearing to charges including murder, attempted murder and terrorism.
The teenager’s crimes were using a bladed weapon to murder one woman and injure another inside a massage parlour in 2021. The 17-year-old’s “actions were designed to intimidate the public as a whole, and in particular women,” Judge Suhail Akhtar said.
In his written ruling from July, the judge ruled there can be no doubt that the accused’s attack was terrorism, given how the teenager “wished to send a message to society” and that he was part of a group whose members are “prepared to kill and commit violence on the public in furtherance of their ideological beliefs.”
Sentencing for that young man, who cannot be identified under Canadian law because he was a young offender at the time of that murder, is scheduled for later this month.
The pursuit of terrorism allegations does not necessarily secure any additional jail time for offenders upon conviction. Any adult who is convicted of premeditated murder in Canada gets a life sentence with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years. Convictions on any additional terrorism charges in such cases would not likely change such outcomes. But in cases of violence motivated by misogyny, racism or Islamophobia, terrorism charges can send a strong message to the public by highlighting underlying ideologies and denouncing them.
Charging violent crimes as terrorism offences can denounce violent mindsets that are spreading in society, but it is also a difficult approach for prosecutors. They must dig up and be prepared to present in court writings, speeches or online activity that can support the Crown’s core arguments about ideological motivations behind crimes.
Experts say this is why Mr. Veltman’s jury trial matters – it will put Canada’s emerging terrorism prosecution strategy on full public display before a jury.
“What makes this interesting is this is going to be the case where they’re going to have to make that case,” said Michael Nesbitt, a law professor at the University of Calgary. “You would expect to see an expert, for example, who would explain what a ‘far right’ ideology is. You would expect to see a decision on what exactly ideology means in terms of the belief set.”
Dr. Nesbitt has co-authored essays showing that Canadian law enforcement used to almost exclusively pursue anti-terrorism cases only against people accused of having ties to al-Qaeda-inspired individuals and groups.
But now, he says, Mr. Veltman’s case stands as the first in a coming wave of public trials involving suspects accused of wholly different kinds of ideologically motivated extremism: “We’ve seen the shift in the last three or four years. We hadn’t seen it for the first 19 years or so of terrorism laws as they were on the books.”
The Anti-Terrorism Act was not used against another incel-motivated killer, a man who slayed 11 people during the 2018 Toronto van attack. The Quebec City shooter who committed a 2017 mass murder against six Muslims in a mosque also never faced terrorism charges. But observers responded to these cases and others by saying that Canada’s criminal-justice system must try to cast terrorism cases against a wider array of suspects, if these laws are to be seen as fair.
Hate is spreading in Canada. The number of police-reported hate crimes rose by 72 per cent between 2019 and 2021, according to a Statistics Canada report released this year. Religious hate crimes, including those directed against Muslims, were the fastest-growing category. Racism played a role in the rising rates too. “Much of the rise in hate crimes targeting a race or ethnicity … was the result of more reported hate crimes targeting the Arab and West Asian populations,” the Statscan report said.
The Afzaal family, whose older members hailed from Pakistan and wore traditional clothing, were very close-knit. One year before her death, Yumnah completed a wall-length mural at her school. Friends say the whole family pitched in on the project.
The slaying of the four family members in 2021 led the federal government to create a $1.2-million-a-year office on combatting Islamophobia. It is led by special representative Amira Elghawaby, who in June addressed a crowd where the attack happened. “This is the intersection where hate took away love, where fear took away life,” she said at the time.