RUTHFULLY YOURS

ONTARIO POLICE CHARGE DEFIANT MOSLEM EXTREMIST

Posted By Ruth King on July 9th, 2010

http://www.financialpost.com/news/Ontario+police+charge+Muslim+extremist/32
Ontario police set to charge Muslim extremist

Stewart Bell, National Post · Thursday, Jul. 8, 2010
Over the past three years, Salman Hossain has openly called for terrorist attacks in Canada, cheered the killing of Canadian troops in Afghanistan and urged fellow Muslims to “exterminate” Canada’s Jewish population.

When police started showing up at his suburban home in Mississauga, Ont., in 2007, he was not chastened. He wrote that he “honestly got a kick out of pissing off the RCMP…. HAHAHA…. You can’t charge me for possessing a thought.”

Canadian authorities have apparently heard enough of Mr. Hossain’s thoughts. Ontario Provincial Police have scheduled a news conference for Thursday afternoon to announce the results of a lengthy investigation into the young extremist.

He is expected to face charges of promoting hatred and, quite possibly, advocating a genocide. If so, it would mark the first time an advocating genocide charge has been prosecuted in Canada. The charges relate to hundreds of racist comments Mr. Hossain has posted on the Internet.

In an indication of the significance of the case, outgoing OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, Deputy Commissioner Vince Hawkes and Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber are all scheduled to attend the 2 p.m. ET news conference in Toronto, along with members of the OPP Operations Intelligence Bureau.

The announcement comes nine months after Ontario Attorney-General Chris Bentley told the Jewish community the Crown had decided not to proceed with charges against Mr. Hossain because he was in a rehabilitation program to correct his behaviour.

Far from being rehabilitated, however, Mr. Hossain has only become more outspoken since then. He now openly urges Muslims to organize an invasion of Canada to overthrow the “Jewish run Canadian government” and begin the “mass extermination” of Canada’s Jews.

While Mr. Hossain will face criminal charges, arresting him will be more complicated. He left the country before the OPP investigation was completed and is now in South Asia, where he continues to advocate racist violence on his U.S.-based website.

“Yes, I am a fanatic,” he wrote in one of his recent posts from abroad. “I am ready to kill millions.” Last week, he wrote, “We must never cease in our efforts to eliminate the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Their permanent liquidation and destruction is the only solution.”

Under Canada’s hate propaganda law, it is illegal to advocate or promote a genocide against an identifiable group. Offenders face up to five years imprisonment for each count. The law has been on the books for decades but it has never been used.

Canada’s only genocide trials to date have involved suspects accused of mass atrocities abroad, in countries such as Rwanda. The government has also deported suspected war criminals on the grounds they were complicit in genocides.

But Mr. Hossain’s repeated calls for the mass killings of Jews may have prompted the Crown to put the genocide law to its first test. All charges under the hate propaganda section of the Criminal Code require the approval of the provincial Attorney-General.

In addition to filing charges, the OPP could use the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to ask its law enforcement partners in the United States to shut down the website that posts Mr. Hossain’s alleged hate materials.

Mr. Hossain did not respond to an email asking whether he would return voluntarily to Canada to face charges, but his “official spokesman” told a Post reporter on May 21: “You need to stop your harassment of Mr. Hossin, because he’s not the only one calling for your execution you rat faced scumbag…. Every last Jew on planet earth needs [sic] executed IMMEDIATELY …”

Born in Bangladesh, Mr. Hossain immigrated to Canada with his father and mother, who once told a reporter her son was “stupid, an idiot and immature.” Online, he has described himself as “a regular Muslim supporting the jihad overseas” and a friend of the Toronto 18 terrorists who have pleaded guilty to plotting attacks in southern Ontario.

The RCMP and CSIS started investigating Mr. Hossain at least three years ago, when he began calling for terrorist attacks in Canada. In response, students at the University of Toronto Mississauga launched a campaign to have him expelled.

The OPP hate crimes and extremism unit also investigated and brought a case to the Crown but Mr. Bentley told the Canadian Jewish Congress on Oct. 1, 2009, that no charges would be laid because Mr. Hossain was in a program to help him understand and rectify his behaviour and had refrained from making similar statements for over a year.

Shortly after Mr. Bentley’s announcement, Mr. Hossain resurfaced on Filthy Jewish Terrorists, a conspiracy theory website, with headlines such as “The Jews and the West must be nuked” and “The destruction of the West is the only way to exterminate the Jews.”

On the website, Mr. Hossain uses terminology reminiscent of the far right and neo-Nazis, writing that “a genocide should be perpetrated against the Jewish populations of North America and Europe.” Another post on the site reads, “we need to start carrying out genocide against the Jewish people … Their permanent extermination is the only solution.”

York University suspended Mr. Hossain after the National Post reported he was under investigation. “I do not believe in ‘Canadian’ values whatever they mean,” he responded on his website. “I forfeit my Canadian citizenship and will not literally participate in their fabricated judicial system.”

Canada does not have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh but Ottawa could still ask Dhaka to arrest and return him to stand trial. At the very least, the approval of charges means he will be immediately arrested if he sets foot in Canada again.

“We are unable to comment on whether we could proceed with such a request in the abstract and in the absence of a formal request for extradition which would have to be assessed based on all of the relevant circumstances,” said Paula Creighan, a spokeswoman at the Department of Justice. “Such matters would be assessed on a case-by-case basis.”

Commisioner Fantino, who is stepping down next month, was closely involved in the investigation of Mr. Hossain. He said in an interview in May that he felt the website was “crossing the line significantly” and the investigation was a high priority.”

National Post

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