Iranian Women Demanding Justice

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

"[Those who foment unrest to] sabotage [the country deserve harsh prosecution and punishment. Young people who] come to the streets after excitement after watching something on the internet should be] disciplined."

"[I was] heartbroken [by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody; a] sad incident."

"This rioting was planned. These riots and insecurities were designed by America and the Zionist regime, and their employees."

"[I condemn protesters ripping off hijabs, setting fire to mosques, banks and police cars], actions that are not normal, that are unnatural."

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

 

"The regime's brute force [at Sharif University as] an expression of sheer fear at the power of education and freedom [must be condemned]."

"The courage of Iranians is incredible."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock

The mass demonstrations over Mahsa Amini's death in Iranian police custody could create lasting change, say analysts.

 

A simple young woman from a small village in Iran's Kurdistan region, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini came to Tehran on a visit with her father and brother. She wore her headscarf casually, as was the custom in her village, never imagining it would be seen as a sacrilegious offence against the rules and regulations imposed on women throughout Iran, since in Kurdistan she had never before encountered criticism of her attire. But loose strands of hair became a criminal offence the Tehran morality police found serious enough to arrest her for.

 

Her desperate cries to her father and brother to have her released left them helpless and her in custody in a police van. Later, other women the morality police had arrested, sharing prisoner space in the van with her spoke of the guards beating the young women while she cried out in agony and fear. For some unknown reason her fear seemed to make her a target for their misogynistic rage. She would never see her father and brother again, nor would they see her alive.

 

Her family speak quite plainly of her death by beating in custody. While police authirties claim the young woman died of a heart attack. Iranians the world over are infuriated and join protests to express their anger at the Iranian clerical regime. The theocracy in Iran is facing popular opposition of a kind and volume rarely encountered. Leaving the regime to order the military, the Iranian Republican Guard Corps, the motorcycle brigade called the Basij to control the crowds chanting death to the regime. 

An image from social media which is claimed to show Iranian schoolchildren expressing dissatisfaction towards the country's leadership. Photograph: Twitter

 

Iranian women are vociferously protesting, marching in crowds of enraged people, chanting death to the Ayatollah, waving their headscarves in defiance, cutting off their hair in solidarity with their cause of liberation from the shackles of Khomeinism's Islamist regime. Schoolgirls are defiant, heckling and taunting the Basij, while their mothers and grandmothers clad in black chadors, the anxiety on their faces hidden, as they attempt to herd their daughters back home from school and away from the raging morality police.

 

Iran closed its Sharif Univ4rsity of Technology in Tehran with the announcement that only doctoral students would be permitted on campus following the turmoil of student protests. Police kept hundreds of students on campus, firing rounds of tear gas, while dispersing the protests. Plainclothed police arrested and detained hundreds of students, beating some university staff. "Suppose we beat and arrest, is this the solution?" rhetorically asked a column n a normally hard-line Iranian newspaper, the Jomhouri Eslami: "Is this productive?" 

The protests that began in Kurdistan, have spread throughout the theocratic country. From Tehran to far-flung provinces, with authorities desperate to bring an end to the riotous displays of anger with the regime, disrupting internet access, blocking social media apps. Across the Middle East and Europe, Canada and the United States, people are coming out in drove to protest in support of those doing just that in Iran. 

 

Women have been at the forefront of the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini  EPA

 

Citizens of Germany, Poland, Italy France, Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries have been detained by Iranian authorities. Mahsa Amini, in her lifetime, would never have been able to imagine how important she has become in her country of birth. At least a hundred people have been killed while protesting her death, many more injured. Thousands have been arrested, leaving the regime frantic with apprehension. The size of the protests have motivated the regime to surreptitiously bring in Arabs to help restrain the protesters; hard-liners from Syria and Iraq, Lebanon and reportedly Palestinians.

Truth and Consequences

Patrik Mathews, (RCMP Manitoba/Reuters)

"I did not hear any particular apology to our country. to me, it's galling to think someone who's not an American would know better than us what kind of country we should have here and decide that you hate America so much you're going to infiltrate our country and tear it down."

"In the letter you submitted, you didn't necessarily inspire confidence that you've changed to the point that there's no longer a threat of violence from  you."

"Nevertheless, you have stated that all you want to do is go back to Canada and live a normal life. We all hope that is something that will happen once you serve this sentence."

"[...Conversations, text exchanges and planning represented more than merely] wishes and hopes and far-flung fantasies [of a pair of] wide-eyed neophytes."

"They were specific, serious and calculating in the actions they intended to perpetrate."

District Court Judge Theodore Chuang, Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S.

Former Manitoba army reservist Patrik Mathews has been sentenced to nine years in prison for his involvement in what the FBI called a neo-Nazi plot to start a race war in the United States.CBC

Nine years in prison for former Canadian Armed Forces reservist Patrik Mathews, 28, for his role in a plot to exploit escalating U.S. social tensions in the hopes of triggering a "race war", in the assessment of the FBI. A resident of Beausejour in Manitoba, he excused himself for his ill judgement when "I got involved with the wrong people". As though the choice to connect himself with the white supremacist group The Base was an incidental error for which he was not seriously at fault. He had no idea, he claimed, of the depth and seriousness of their intended actions.

Judge Chuang, after reviewing all the evidence presented to him, and carefully reading through the letter submitted by Patrik Mathews exonerating himself and blaming a misunderstanding on his part, took due consideration of both the defence and the prosecution positions on the punishment to be meted out to the terror-by-accidental-affiliation chastened man who was, he claimed, innocent of any intent to carry out any acts of violence.

Apart from the sentence of 9 years in prison for his lapse in judgement, there is an additional penalty of three years of supervised release once his prison term is completed. And when justice has been served, he will be deported back to Canada. Both Matthews and his co-defenant, U.S. army veteran Brian Mark Lemley Jr., pleaded guilty to weapons charges associated with the plot to precipitate a clash between police and thousands of heavily armed gun control protesters, in Richmond, Virginia.. 

 

In August 2019, Brian Lemley and William Bilbrough attended a training camp for neo-Nazi group The Base. Lemley is standing second from left, holding a long gun in the air. Bilbrough is kneeling in the centre while holding a blade. (U.S. Attorney detention memo)

 

The defence had petitioned the court for location to a prison facility in Minnesota so their client would be located closer to his family in Manitoba.  Originally, he informed the court he believed The Base was committed to ideals that were less extreme, focusing on immigration controls. He characterized the work of The Base as "horrifically and disastrously wrong", though it might have been seen by him to be good, clean fun at the time.

 

He could have been given a sentence up to 25 years in prison, in reflection of the "terrorism enhancement" provision requested by the prosecution. On the other hand, the defense counsel argued a sentence of less than three years, for after all the defendants' plan ultimately was never carried out. Contrastingly, his crimes, prosecutors argued, were serious and his motives even more so.

 

During a search of the apartment Mathews shared with one of the co-accused, law enforcement agents found videos of Mathews saying violent, anti-Semitic and racist things. (U.S. Attorney detention memo)

 

Court had been presented with ample evidence of the plot unfolding, where the two spoke in terms of killing federal officials, derailing trains and poisoning water supplies; all part of a violent scheme to disrupt and exploit political and social tensions in the hopes of triggering a race war in the U.S. Another co-defendant, William Garfield Bilbrough IV, also pleaded guilty to assisting Mathews to enter the U.S. illegally, for which he was sentenced to five years in prison.

The heavily incriminating evidence that came to light was gathered through FBI wiretaps, "sneak-and-peek" warrants, and the cooperation of undercover officers. As all too often happens in cases of this nature, Patrik Mathews' father described his son as a man with a good heart but a troubled soul, who had suffered as a child from being pushed around by schoolyard bullies, resulting in an attitude of social alienation.

Mounties found this handwritten list of mass shootings when they executed a search warrant at Mathews' Beausejour, Man., residence in August 2019. The list included the year, number of people dead and whether the shooter was on medication. (U.S. prosecution sentencing memorandum)

Centenarians Bearing Witness

"The defendant supported this [systemic mass murder at Sachsenhausen between 1941 and 1945] knowingly and willingly - at least by conscientiously carrying out guard duty, which was perfectly integrated into the killing regime."

Public prosecutor Cyrill Klement, Neuruppin, Germany

 

"[This was the] last trial for my friends and acquaintances and my loved ones who were murdered."

"It is a very important day for me. This was an SS man. I hope he gets convicted."

Leon Schwarzenbaum, 100-year-old survivor of Sachsenhausen

 

"This is unknown to me because I know nothing about it. [I am] innocent."

"Everything is torn [dans ma tête]. [I am] alone here."

Josef Schutz, former non-commissioned officer of the “Totenkopf” (Skull) division of the Waffen-SS 

"He pretends not to know while he remembers everything perfectly in detail!" 

"It is not bad! It is purely a manipulation of the lawyer who has opted for this strategy of silence."

Antoine Grumbach, 79-year-old Frenchman

Josef Schutz, who was 21 when he first became a guard at Sachsenhausen in 1942, appears in court  Reuters

Shocking that a man who reached the ripe old age of a century now faces a public prosecution for his part in enabling a genocide. That at age 100 he cannot simply be left in his final months and days, perhaps years, to live in peace. Shocking that he has lived to age one hundred having been part of the world's most infamous killing machine. Shocking that he has lived a normal life, unperturbed at his role as a dutiful (Lithuanian extraction) German during the Third Reich, following orders to view Jews as vermin with a duty to obliterate their noxious presence. 

Shocking that fate was so tolerant of those like him, ushering him into a long life.

Did he ever, in those years contemplate what he had taken part in? Did he find it useful to excuse himself from responsibility, consoling himself with the reality of the temper of the times? Does he to the present day, ever think of the millions of people whose lives were extinguished because they were people of conscience who opposed the Nazi regime, political opponents, gays, Roma, prisoners-of-war, and above all Jews from every walk of life, the elderly, women and children; the men who died of exposure and hunger and disease during their slave labour incarceration?

Would it have been at all of any use to him, to his victims, to the world at large -- doubtful that the Holocaust really occurred, and those who accept that it did, struggling to fully comprehend the evil that humanity is capable of, to be confronted by a man his own age who somehow managed to survive the labour camps and the death camps, a man whose entire family was murdered -- for a conversation between them, the enabler and the victim? Would it clarify anything? Would it ease the pain?

Josef S., a member of the paramilitary SS of the Nazi party is charged in a German court of contributing to the deaths of 3,518 people. These were people too ill and debilitated, starving skeletons, unable to be prodded into a death march before the onslaught of Allied troops, who were shoved into a purpose-built chamber to be gassed with Zyklon B. before the arrival of Soviet troops. Josef S. spent his time between 1942 and 1946 standing guard in the Sachsenhausen watchtower. He was declared medically fit to stand trial.

He is frail, he uses a walker and without doubt he would prefer to be anywhere else than in that courtroom. In that courtroom, watching, listening, taking note, are other elderly people, Jews, among whom is one whose age matches that of the former camp guard. A man of 100 who brought along a prized photograph, of himself as a boy with his mother, his father and his uncle, all dead, whose ashes fertilized the fields when smoke from the chimney of the gas chamber scattered them around the concentration camp.

The defendant's face is obscured when photographs are taken. It was mostly political prisoners from around Europe, Soviet prisoners of war and Jews housed at Sachsenhausen. "It's a lot of emotion ... I can't really speak", 79-year-old Antoine Grumbach said tearfully. His father was a French resistance fighter. The accusation against the defendant is that of "contributing to cruel and insidious murders:giving aid in "creating and maintaining life-threatening conditions in the camp".

Leon Schwarzbaum survived Sachsenhausen as well as Auschwitz and Buchenwald   Reuters

Why did it take so long? Why were these conscienceless enablers not brought to justice long ago? The wheels of justice are warped, not round, but square and it takes them an intolerably long time to reach their goal. These few pitiful elderly figures represent a mere minuscule fraction of a fraction of the total force numbers like themselves who made it possible for Nazi Germany to carry out its ambitious goal of genocidal mass annihilation of a people.

Opened in 1936, 84 years ago, Sachsenhausen was one of the earliest of the Nazi concentration camps, serving as a training source for SS guards who, once graduated in the fine art of guarding helpless men, women and children, carried on their important tasks in other similar camps, serving across Europe, including in Auschwitz and Treblinka. 

 In 2011, a court ruling stated that those who contributed indirectly to wartime atrocities without being actively engaged in murder themselves could bear criminal responsibility. At Sachsenhausen SS guards put on doctor’s white coats to hand out soap and towels to those destined for the gas chamber, to convince them they were entering a room for to receive medical treatment or a shower. There, they were gassed to death.

Hiding in shame: Former concentration camp guard Josef S covers his face with a folder in court (GETTY)

"It is true that the accused is a very old man, but so is the Auschwitz survivor who arrived today, he is also 100 years."

"And, of course, there are very, very many victims who would also have liked to enjoy a full life and life to an old age, but who were not able to."

"Thankfully, however, there is no expiry date on justice."

Dr. Hans-Jürgen Förster 

 

"Today really means a lot for me, especially as someone who has been directly involved in providing information to the German authorities in cases such as these, and also as someone who knows survivors of Nazi concentration camps."

"Josef S was a member of the SS, and was at the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen, and because of his job this means was part of the wider machine of death. This was his job. It is therefore right that he should be tried for this, as should the few remaining Nazis that are still alive."

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, leading Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Israel

The U.S. Justice System to the Rescue!

Mohammed Khalifa, a Canadian citizen who was a leading figure in the Islamic State of Iraq, was recently transferred into FBI custody. In an interview with CBC's Fifth Estate, Khalifa admitted to playing an important role in producing and disseminating Islamic State propaganda to Western audiences    CBC

"As alleged, Mohammed Khalifa not only fought for ISIS on the battlefield in Syria, but he was also the voice behind the violence."

"Through his alleged leading role in translating, narrating, and advancing ISIS's online propaganda, Khalifa promoted the terrorist group, furthered its worldwide recruitment efforts, and expanded the reach of videos that glorified the horrific murders and indiscriminate cruelty of ISIS."

Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of Virginia

"[Khalifa was] a deeply ideologically committed member of the Islamic State [until his capture]."

"The ISIS higher ups also saw value in him as a media personnel, and he travelled with much of the leadership to the final holdouts."

"One of the key things he mentioned during our interview was that ISIS, as it was losing territory, started to see consistent media releases as strategically important."

"Because of all the Canadian prisoners being held in Syria, Ridwan [Mohammed Khalifa, aka Abu Ridwan Ai-Kanadi] is probably the easiest to make a case against."

"There are literally hundreds of hours of ISIS audio that he put out there, and has also admitted to multiple reporters that this was his primary role with the Islamic State."

Amarnath Amarasingam, professor, terrorism, radicalization and extremism research, Queen's University

As an adherent of the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a Saudi-born Canadian citizen who travelled illegally from the country of his citizenship to Syria to pledge allegiance to then-ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he was assigned to the ISIL media bureau, where he excelled in the position, becoming one of the Islamist fundamentalist group's most prominent public relations stalwarts, actively producing and distributing videos for public consumption extolling the virtues of the group and demonstrating its virtuous loyalty to Islamist principles through heinous atrocities.

 

From 2013 to 2019 his outstanding work assisted hugely in the recruiting of dedicated new ISIL members. His role as a publicity director helped amplify the Islamic State's formidably fearful reputation and was without doubt useful in convincing opposing militaries in Syria and Iraq that they hadn't a chance in hell to defend the populations their professional position demanded of them, ensuring they would melt away at the first signs that Islamic State fighters approached, leaving defenceless civilians to fend for themselves. 

 

In the invasion of Sinjar when Islamic State viciously targeted the ancient Yazidi population, the merciless killing of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls exemplified the blood-curdling mission the Islamic State gave themselves in their jihad against minorities helpless before their onslaught. With Iraqi and Syrian military defence a pipe dream, it was left to the Kurdish militias to oppose and defend Christians and Yazidis and other groups fleeing the violent persecution and threats to annihilate them.

 

The US-led international coalition gave air cover to the Kurdish Peshmerga who alone demonstrated the capacity to give shelter to fleeing civilian populations, ethnic and religious minorities, in effectively countering the burgeoning presence of the Islamic State caliphate, but it was without doubt Kurdish valour and values and military acumen that destroyed the expansionary plans of the Islamic State. When the geographic gains of ISIL were destroyed, it was the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces that took upon itself the imprisonment of Islamic State fighters and their women and children, freeing the occupied towns and villages from their venomous presence.

 

A Syrian Democratic Forces fighter burns an ISIS flag on the front line on the western side of Raqqa, northeast Syria, Monday, July 17, 2017. (Hussein Malla/AP Photo)

Among those imprisoned by the SDF in the prison camp established for that purpose was Canadian ISIL member Mohammed Khalifa. The SDF has repeatedly requested that foreign governments repatriate their citizens who had joined ISIL to relieve their burden. Some have complied, others have not. Some have taken back only female ISIL members and their children. Some will stand trial for their offences against humanity. It is the fate of the children for the most part that exercises the compassionate mind.

 

There can be no compassion wasted on psychopaths like Khalifa, both male and female who were complicit in the atrocities committed by the Islamic State, from their staged and videoed beheadings, crucifixions, drownings, death-by-explosives and other malicious horrors they visited on their many victims. All of which they gloried in, celebrated, proudly exhibited. Which alternately gained them new recruits willing and eager to join the death-dealing, or further burnished the dread in peoples' minds of the terrorists.

 

It can be seen as the responsibility of the government of Canada to have taken the initiative to return this man and his ilk to Canada. Less famous, as in infamous members of ISIL with Canadian citizenship are known to have returned to Canada of their own volition, are not and have never been imprisoned, nor faced trials with the reason being given that evidence against them is too difficult to obtain, to mount a criminal investigation to bring them to justice, and so supposedly they are 'under observation' by intelligence services.

 

There is more than ample evidence available for any jury to reach a decision about Khalifa; his signature is on some of the most vile, vicious, violent of Islamic State's videos and other publicity instruments meant to enhance their reputation and create a lasting impression of sadistic barbarity in the name of Islamism. Yet Canada's government has chosen to do nothing. It has chosen to exhale a sigh of relief that the United States has taken it upon itself to exact justice on behalf of the victims of Islamic State's notorious inhumanity. 

 

Thousands of videos, graphics and other images have been collected together to form a growing propaganda archive   ISD

 

"It’s very interesting that the U.S. is going forward with this case and not Canada."

"Ridwan is probably our easiest case. There are literally hundreds of hours of his voice recorded in ISIS media. Cases against other prisoners are slightly more difficult."

"I suppose the U.S. sees him as important for reasons we probably don’t know yet."

 Queen’s University professor Amarnath Amarasingam

 

"Those who left Canada to support the terror organization need to be held accountable for their crimes before a court of law."

"I'm glad the U.S. had the political courage to do what the Canadian government did not. He is a Canadian, he left from Canada. It should be the responsibility of the Canadian government to hold him accountable for his crimes."

"[Khalifa is] calm, cold, and indifferent."

"He had no remorse for what he had done and felt his actions were justified."

Leah West, professor, national security law, Carleton University 

 

Seeking Justice and Closure for Canadian-Iranians

People hold signs with images of the victims of the downed Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, which was shot down near Tehran by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, as family and friends gather to take part in a march to mark the first anniversary, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Jan. 8, 2021. Canada and other nations whose citizens died in Iran's downing of a Ukrainian jetliner on Jan. 8, 2020, called on Tehran to come clean about the tragedy and "deliver justice" for the victims' families. - COLE BURSTON/AFP via Getty Images

"I think Canada should take steps. We make a mistake if we fall into this trap of thinking we must exercise a sort of self-censorship."

"We need to take a principled stand. Canadians have been essentially murdered by this regime [Iranian Islamist theocracy]."

Aurel Brain, professor of international relations, Middle East expert, University of Toronto

"We don't expect justice from the Iranian regime. But we expect the government of Canada to protect its own citizens and to be much more effective."

"Now the ball is with the Liberal government."

Ali Gorji, Iranian-Canadian

"This verdict has no basis and does not consist of any objective reasoning or documentation."

"This behaviour of the Canadian judge, by following orders and political cliches, is shameful for a country which claims to follow the rule of law."

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Saeed Khatibzadeh

"We have to hold Iran accountable for its actions. Being passive in the face of these threats only further emboldens the Iranian regime", Michael Chong foreign-affairs critic for the federal Conservatives pointed out reasonably, of the newly-released Ontario court's ruling that the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the deliberate shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner -- where half of the passengers were Canadians and others were travelling to Canada on visas or to resume their academic studies -- as an act of pure terrorism.

The court's decision, points out Member of Parliament Chong, validates the Parliamentary opposition Conservative Party's long-standing position calling on the government to list the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. Representing a quarter of a million military personnel, part of the Iranian military, that is highly politicized and well known for its al Quds branch focus on fostering terrorist groups in service to the terrorist ideology of the Republic.

While the Quds branch is a listed terrorist group in Canada, the position is that the entire IRGC should be included. the Canadian House of Commons passed a 2018 motion calling for the entire corps to be listed, but the Liberal-led government has seen fit to just sit on the motion. This government has been more interested in re-establishing diplomatic relations with Iran that were severed by the previous Canadian government that had no problem identifying Iran for what it is; a terrorist-sponsoring nation.

Justice Edward Belobaba of Ontario's Superior Court ruled in mid-May that Iran had deliberately targeted and shot down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752, an act that makes the Iranian theocracy liable under the provisions of the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. There were high tensions in play on January 8, 2020 between Iran and the U.S. when the plane was shot down. Iran claims the passenger jet was mistaken for an incoming American missile headed for Tehran.

 

The problem with that neat little explanation is that the plane on lift-off was heading OUT of Tehran, not entering it. One missile is a dreadful error; two missiles, a deliberate attack. None of which answers the question that if Iran was so nervous about its tensions with the U.S. anticipating missiles entering its airspace, why would it allow commercial flights to continue? There were a number of flights earlier in the day, none of them experiencing problems. This flight was different.

 

 A forensic investigation team was tasked to probe the event, its report in its final stages to be shortly made public. "Canada remains deeply concerned about the lack of convincing information and evidence provided by Iran.We will not rest until the families [whose loved ones lost their lives in the plane shoot-down] get the justice and accountability they deserve", stated John Babcock, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs Canada.

The decision the Ontario Supreme Court arrived at is in relation to a lawsuit filed against Iran on behalf of relatives of those who perished on that ill-fated plane, but it has no direct bearing on government affairs, unless government decides to use it in a full-scale government-to-government push for justice and compensation for the families involved, from the Republic of Iran. Of the 176 passengers and crew aboard the plane, 55 were Canadian citizens, 30 permanent residents, and 53 were students studying in Canada.

"The plaintiffs have established that the shooting down of Flight 752 by the defendants was an act of terrorism and constitutes 'terrorist activity'..."
"I find on a balance of probabilities that the missile attacks on Flight 752 were intentional and directly caused the deaths of all onboard."
Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba 

 

"Considering the TOR-M1 advanced military capabilities, two radars and control system, pre-approved flight plans and control of the airspace resting with the IRGC, and the firing of not one, but two missiles, it is not possible for two missiles to be fired by mistake as the IRGC claims."

"There are multiple redundant systems and procedures to prevent accidental shooting of civilian aircraft."

Dr. Bahman Jeldi, Iranian analyst, Canadian Center for Persian Studies  

 

"It is my hope that this decision does not prevent Canada's government from pursuing this case in international fora like the International Court of Justice.

"And I hope such a court wouldn't view this case as a replacement for an international judgment that finds Iran responsible for the killing of 176 innocent people."

Kaveh Shahrooz, lawyer, human rights activist

On Jan. 8, 2020, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in the skies over Tehran with two surface-to-air missiles, killing all 176 people aboard, including 138 with ties to Canada. (Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press)

 

Not Guilty of Murder : Allahu Akbar!

"No element of the information file indicates that the consumption of cannabis by the person concerned was carried out with the awareness that this use of narcotics could lead to such a manifestation [of psychiatric disorder]."

"[The defendant committed the killing after succumbing to a] delirious fit [and was thus not responsible for his actions]." 

Court of Cassation’s Supreme Court of Appeals, France

 

"Today we can smoke, snort, prick ourselves in high doses to the point of causing ourselves an acute deliriousness, which has led to an abolition of discernment and we will benefit from criminal irresponsibility."

Attorney Oudy Bloch

"[The decision represents a] devastating blow [which] potentially creates a precedent for all hate criminals to simply claim insanity or decide to smoke, snort or inject drugs or even get drunk before committing their crimes."

Shimon Samuels, director for international relations, Simon Wiesenthal Centre

Sarah Halimi was beaten before she was thrown off her Paris apartment building's roof in April 2017. (Courtesy of the Halimi family)

 

"In 2017, Kabili Traoré, a Muslim of Malian origin, who had no previous psychiatric history but a long criminal record, with 22 convictions—including for robbery, attempted robbery, drug-dealing, and possession of illegal arms—climbed over the balcony of the flat of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish woman age 66, tortured her, and then threw her over the balcony to her death. Traoré appeared to be in a state of religious excitation, for he was heard to shout “Allahu Akbar” and “I have killed Shaitan” (Satan). There is no doubt that he was psychotic at the time, or that his psychotic state was precipitated by his use of cannabis."

Theodore Dalrymple, contributing editor, City Journal

  

"The body landed in the courtyard, not far from the building’s bins. Shortly before 5am on 4 April 2017, a 65-year-old woman was hurled from the third-floor balcony of a social housing project in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, a rapidly gentrifying area on the eastern side of the French capital. An hour earlier, that same woman – a retired doctor and kindergarten teacher – had been asleep in the small apartment where she had lived for the past 30 years. When she woke up, she saw the face of her 27-year-old neighbour in the darkness. The man, who still lived with his family on the building’s second floor, had first stormed into another apartment, whose tenants had locked themselves in a bedroom and called the police. By the time he climbed up the fire escape into his victim’s apartment, three officers were present in the building."

"The autopsy would later reveal that the woman’s skull had been crushed, most likely with the telephone on her bedside table. Before and after his victim lost consciousness, the assailant beat her until the nightgown she was wearing – white, with a blue floral pattern – was soaked with her blood. He then dragged her body to the balcony of the apartment, and threw her over the railing."

James McAuley, The Guardian

The 65-year-old orthodox Jewish woman who had a medical degree, who worked as a primary school teacher, who was a mother of three, had experienced verbal abuse and threats expressed by a young man whose family lived in the same apartment building in the Belleville area of Paris, had reason to be concerned, and she was worried about her safety. She lived on the third floor of a social-housing apartment complex, the only Jew in her block. 

 

The young man who accosted her in the elevator, in the apartment's public spaces with his anti-Semitic smears was a felon who lived with his family in the same apartment block she lived in and had lived in for many years. He had a criminal record for violence, he was a drug dealer, and in total an utterly unsavoury character. She feared for her security. On the other hand, no doubt felt it would be too difficult to move, and why should she, this was her home?

 

Until it no longer was, when the man who was a steady marijuana-user, accustomed to smoking 14, 15 marijuana joints in a day, barged into the apartment of a family on the second floor. His violent entrance and his manner frightened the family, and they barricaded themselves in a room. They could hear their uninvited visitor praying, citing verses from the Koran. They desperately called for police through an emergency line, and waited. Before police arrived, the man exited the apartment onto its balcony, to climb to the balcony above.

 

The man, a French-Malian, was reputed not to have been a devout Muslim. He had no mastery of Arabic, the language in which the Koran is written. But he knew some Arabic words, like the name of Satan, and the commonly-used !Allahu Akbar! attesting that God is Great, and voiced frequently by Islamists engaged in terrorist activity. It's what he proclaimed when he mercilessly beat the 65-year-old

woman when he entered her apartment. And he shouted in triumph that he had killed the devil that she never realized she was.

After he had beaten her, tortured her, he threw her from the balcony to her death, assuming she wasn't dead by the time he threw her off the balcony. In French law it appears that if someone commits murder while in the throes of an alcohol- or drug-induced psychosis, they cannot be held to be guilty of the crime committed while in that state, as this psychopath was. That of his own volition and choice induced that state of psychotic paranoia, claiming that some force outside himself led him to kill the woman, appears not to have influenced the decision to find him not guilty of murder.

Since Sarah Hallimi's 'involuntary' demise otherwise known as murder at the hands of a hate-demented religious zealot, her killer was been held in a psychiatric institution. And it would appear that sanity has been restored to this vile creature in the interim, with many people knowledgeable in French law and criminality suggesting that it should not be too long before he is released, once more free to stalk and threaten another elderly Jewish woman. Interestingly, French authorities have been reluctant to characterize the vicious murder as having been led by anti-Semitism.

 

On the other hand, since these criminal psychopathic anti-Semites usually target the most vulnerable, it might very well be children who will be next threatened, as has been done before in France. To present as Jewish through tell-tale visibility that identifies Orthodox Jewry, is to become a target of vicious Jew-haters. And if Jews in France where they have lived for a thousand years feel it is their home, it has become a different place over the course of years with immigration from Islamic nations importing their venomous Jew-hatred with their arrival.

 

A march against anti-Semitism in Paris     Photograph Yoan Yalat

Ardent Victimization in the Somali/Muslim Community

"We need to feel safe in our city. Change needs to happen, not empty gestures."

"Enough is enough. The time is now. Justice may have been denied in the trial of the killer of Abdirahman Abdi, but we can still choose justice as a city and make community safer for us."

"We need to stop sending untrained people with guns when our neighbours and loved ones are in crisis."

IfrahYusuf, chair, Justice For Abdirahman Coalition

 

"I don't mind screaming because we need to scream our voices very loud of [sic] what's been going on to our people."

"We must come together. I'm going to say it as loud as I can: Their fists may beat us, their guns may kill us, but they will never, ever silence our voices. Our voices are the most powerful of tools and the most powerful of weapons ..."

"The killings of Indigenous peoples and Black people, it must stop."

Claudette Commanda, Algonquin Anishinaabe, Kitigan Zibi First Nation

Ifrah Yusuf, incoming chair of the Justice for Abdirahman Coalition, leads the march from its starting point at McNabb Park on Saturday. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

Black, Muslim and Indigenous communities in Canada have forged a bond of victimization. They hold the greater white community at fault for their colonialist past and their current attitudes, citing them as being racist and prejudiced against people of colour, against Islam, against First Nations. These are groups within the larger society that see themselves as vulnerable minorities whose rights and entitlements are given short shrift, and who are constantly victims of an unjust legal system. 

What they also have in common is that they frequently live at or below the poverty line. As well, they tend to sequester themselves in deliberately separated blocs, choosing not to integrate with the greater society. A feeling of alienation, of victimhood and vulnerability to unfair treatment and public condemnation is also shared between them. Needless to say that in the greater society there are people living in poverty who are not of colour, not representing any religion, and downtrodden primarily because life has been unkind to them in the circumstances of their lives. Including mental illness and substance dependency.

 

Another issue both communities have in common is that of criminal activity disproportionate to their share of numbers in the community. Gangs, violence, weapons, smuggling, drug dealing, gang rivalry, and intimidation of members of their own communities who fear reporting their illegal and often violent behaviour for fear of retribution. Minor details which keep police busy, involved in their duty to uphold the law and ensure community safety.

Abdi Abdirahman was a 37-year-old Somali refugee, living with his family in Ottawa as a member of the extended Somali community. He had a mental illness for which he received medical treatment as an out-patient and was prescribed anti-psychotic medication to control his outbursts of mental illness. It appears his family failed to agree with the medical professionals who diagnosed, treated and prescribed medication for this man, and they were successful in having that medication dropped as a therapy to keep h8is mental instability in check.

The Justice for Abdirahman Coalition protest started in McNabb Park before turning into a march, blocking traffic on several nearby streets. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

One day in July of 2016 Mr. Abdirahman went to a neighbourhood cafe as apparently he often did. A busy place, there were many others at the cafe and they were witness to his violently forcing himself on a few women, one after another, at the cafe. One woman was so viciously gripped by him that others present came to her rescue and with difficulty detached him, escorting him out to the street. And there, on the street was a young mother with an infant in a bicycle carrier who had just stopped outside the cafe. His attention turned to her, in turn.

Police had been called about the altercation, and one police officer arrived in a police car and attempted to take Abdirahman into custody, struggling to place him in handcuffs. Abdirahman picked up a 30-pound road construction standard swinging it about wildly. Pepper spray failed to stop him. He then sprinted toward the apartment where he lived nearby with his family, the police officer in chase, having radioed for help. When the first officer finally caught up with Abdirahman, again struggling to place him in handcuffs, he was unable to overcome Abdirahman's physical resistance.

A second police officer soon arrived, appraised the situation, and added his physical presence to the struggle where both officers together appeared unable to overcome the resistance of the man in full psychotic fervour. The second officer, Const.Daniel Montsion, hit Abdirahman several times with his gloved hand in the face and on his thigh. Mr. Abdirahman's nose was broken, and suddenly he became still and stopped breathing. The two officers applied CPR attempting to restore him to consciousness. When soon afterward responding paramedics arrived they pronounced Mr. Abdirahman dead.

A coroner's report pointed out that Mr.Abdirahman had died of a heart attack. Brought on by the episode of psychotic attack, and that he had a previously undiagnosed serious heart condition. Const.Montsion was charged with manslaughter, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon (the police-force-issued reinforced gloves). At his trial witnesses for the prosecution were found to have given testimony that was contradicted by surveillance videos. Ontario Court Justice Robert Kelly found Const.Montsion innocent of all charges after taking all evidence and testimony into account.

 

The Justice for Abdirahman protest started in McNabb Park on Saturday. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

But some raucous members of the Ottawa-Somali community will not be convinced that Const.Montsion is not a murderer and was simply discharging his professional duty to the security and safety of the public in extremely difficult circumstances. An ongoing saga of victimization and blame has been released anew by the Justice for Abdirahman Coalition which launched another protest through downtown streets shouting "No justice, no peace", carrying placards and shouting "Black lives, they matter here" and "They say get back, we say fight back".

Traffic was brought to a standstill by the march of several hundred people while organizers unfurled yellow caution tape about the intersection. And five demands were delivered through a megaphone announcement with the coalition calling on the Ottawa Police Services board to freeze the budget for police and city council to oppose any budget increase for police so funding should instead be targeted for public health and social services for the city's Black and indigenous communities.

They also called for "demonstrably racist, misogynist and/or violent officers" to be fired, starting with Const.Montsion, including the Ottawa Police Association president, along with other instructions to be fulfilled to their satisfaction by the City of Ottawa. An alternative to a police response to interventions with people in mental health crisis to be immediately substituted. "No more deaths, fire OPS" was chanted by people in the crowd. "Defund the police", protesters shouted holding Black Lives Matter and Justice for Abdirahman banners.

 

A Justice for Abdirahman protest started in McNabb Park and then turned into a march, stopping traffic on nearby streets, Saturday October 24, 2020. Before the protest began a group of the supporters took a moment to pray. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia