A coalition of tenant groups made three demands of government Wednesday: effective rent control and social housing, and recognizing the right to housing in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Sixty-six households were relocated by the city but evictions are higher than this time last year.
A young man admitted in court Tuesday that he took a $15,000 price to set fire to a synagogue and Jewish community centre in DDO, at the end of 2024.
Mohamed Ilyess Akodad didn’t do a thorough job and was only paid a fraction of the money, and swears he didn’t know what the function of the buildings was. If any investigation has been made of the person who made the offer, it isn’t mentioned here.
Akodad will be sentenced later.
How is it possible this guy can say he was on a paid mission to commit a hate crime/ act of terrorism and there’s no follow up from the Crown?
He literally says “I’d rather not say” who offered him money, or IDs the 2-3 other people who were his accomplices.
He was allowed to allocute – does that not mean the Crown agreed to these allocution terms?
24 months (max) or house arrest
For attempted *terrorism* and a hate crime (!?!?!)
Zero follow up by some of the journalists who have covered this story, including one veteran crime reporter. Even members of the Jewish community interviewed by the Gazette don’t seem terribly interested in finding out who the other people involved are.
Again – are we not talking about multiple potential acts of terrorism/hate crimes?
And this guy did it all for $3K so he could buy… marijuana and codeine?
Is it me or are there some astonishingly big holes here?
I really want to know what investigators are doing, but in a city where you can have your phone stolen and police won’t investigate, even though you can track it to the south shore, I suspect the answer is Not much
The apparent lack of follow-up on this case is disturbing. But I say “apparent” because we don’t actually know that there’s no follow-up. It could well be an on-going investigation.
Regarding the sentence in this arson case, let’s break it down.
First, the guy was a strung out kid when this happened, and he clearly did it for money, not out of any terrorist intentions. Even if he had antisemitic ideas or intentions, the prosecution apparently was not able to prove that.
So the sentence is based on what they could and did prove: that he was a strung out stooge who did the job for money and only for money, not even knowing what the target was. In the course of doing the job he claims to have realized he was in way over his head and he balked and only did enough of the job so that he could get paid and not be seen as chickening out or whatever.
I don’t know if that is true (and neither does anyone reading this) but it is entirely plausible and entirely believable, especially since the guys who hired him refused to give full pay for the job. I’ll bet that many of these arson cases where people hire young idiots to do their dirty work unfold like this, where the kids have no idea what they’re involved in.
He seems to be very remorseful. It doesn’t matter if anyone reading the media reports believes that; what matters is the judge seems to believe it.
So some might see this as part of some grand act of terrorism and hate crimes, but the actual deed conducted by this one dumb kid seems to be just a work-for-hire gig by a strung out kid looking to turn an easy buck. Save the terrorism charges for the guys who hired him.
@ blork – but again, the mere fact that other people were involved means it’s the literal definition of a criminal conspiracy
Add to that between $3,000 and $15,000 to finance the operation?
I don’t have $300 to pay someone to do any kind of job, let alone 10 to 50 times that amount.
The defendant’s remorse, family problems, or substance dependency issues notwithstanding, this is pointing in the direction of either hate-based terrorism, or organized crime.
If it’s not terrorism in the way we normally think about terrorism – and I don’t think it is – and it’s not a hate-motivated attack (at least not by the perpetrator), then what are we left with?
Organized crime? Some kind of intimidation effort against whoever’s car was also targeted?
Are we thinking this isn’t terrorism because of the defendant’s remorse, because the cops haven’t exposed a larger network, or perhaps because it was actually completely unrelated to hate/terrorism?
If so, if this is not an antisemitic attack, that’s significant, because this one specific attempted firebombing has been pointed to consistently as evidence of growing antisemitism in Canada.
American prosecutors say that Hezbollah is funding these “crime for pay” schemes in the US and Canada. Toronto police are trying to find the money behind assaults in that city. Russia is funding attacks in Ukraine and Europe.
American prosecutors also say antifa is terrorism, and that anti-capitalist graffiti could indicate plans for violence that can be reported to federal authorities. Let’s not go there.
“The defendant’s remorse, family problems, or substance dependency issues notwithstanding, this is pointing in the direction of either hate-based terrorism, or organized crime.”
I’m not denying that. For Pete’s sake, please read what I said. I’m saying the weight of all that doesn’t fall on the shoulders of this one stooge. Save that for the prosecution of the people who put him up to it.
If Tony Soprano pays a kid to burn down a restaurant because of some vast protection racket scheme, the only crime the kid is responsible for is the arson. The conspiracy and organized crime charges go against Tony Soprano. Same applies here.
@Blork: your Soprano analogy does not hold up because this was some combination of a hate crime and/or terrorist attack.
@ Blork – right, I’m more curious about the criminal conspiracy angle here, and I’m surprised this guy’s allowed to allocute to so little, and that some of the journalist’s are happy to report on a very narrow angle of the story, presenting it as case closed, when there’s evidently something bigger to consider.
And again, this was pointed out as an antisemitic attack, though the allocution suggests something else is going on.
My thinking is that, if it were actually terrorism, the Crown wouldn’t have allowed the allocution.
But intimidation, possibly by organized crime, yeah maybe…
It’s hard to tell with SPVM investigations because they don’t acknowledge systemic racism, so perhaps they have blinders on to hatre crimes against the Jewish community
But then again, this might not be a hate crime at all
Tim, swap “organized crime” for “hate crime/terrorism” and the analogy holds. The analogy is based on the stooge being just a guy who did a thing with no personal higher-level motivation, but that the responsibility for the organized crime/hate crime/terrorism/whatever lies higher up.
To extend the analogy, if Tony Soprano tells Christopher Moltisanti to burn down a restaurant, Moltisanti is motivated by his desire to move up the ranks in the crime organization. So he would be charged with both arson and probably something to do with organized crime because that is intrinsic to his motive. But if Tony Soprano hires some local idiot to do the job for $1000 and the idiot’s only motivation is the money then it’s hard to pin “organized crime” on him, but not hard to pin “arson” on him.
In this case regarding the synagogue and Jewish community centre it appears the prosecution could not show hate crime/terrorism intent or motivation on the part of the stooge, only intent to do the arson job for money. The hate crime/terrorism responsibility lies with the people who hired him.
Taylor, are you just rattling my chain now? It seems pretty clear that this was a hate crime. But in fact it was (at least) two crimes: the first is arson (and the stooge was found guilty of that) and the second is the hate crime, but no arrests have been made on that.
My comments are in regard to the sentencing of the stooge based on what the prosecution could pin on him. It has nothing to do with people’s feelings about hate crimes or terrorism. This is a pretty simple concept. I don’t understand why people are having such a hard time grasping it.
So the hirer hired the stooge for two crimes: arson and hate crime. Why — I say this as a non-lawyer — is the stooge responsible only for one of the two crimes he was hired for and committed? If a stooge is hired to bring something somewhere and surprise! drugs! the stooge is still responsible for that crime. (This is an honest question, I truly do not have feelings about whether or not he should be/have been prosecuted for a hate crime.)
I’ve read your comments, Blork, and your Soprano analogy holds up.
It’d be nice to hear the pov of any lawyers here, but my thinking is the police did their job, in a sense. They caught the perpetrator, he’s been tried in court and will be punished for the crimes he was charged with, which I believe was arson and property damage, as I couldn’t find in the article what he was actually charged with.
Clearly, there was an organization who had hired a stooge to commit this hate crime. And it seems like a separate and much bigger investigation than the poor kid’s case. Will the hate crime unit investigate the people behind it? Someone with authority in the SPVM would have to authorize it, right?
Jeather, it has to do with motive. Arson is tangible, but “hate crime” is intangible. Arson is a very specific tangible act, but “hate crime” speaks to the REASON behind the act. The stooge did the tangible act, but his reason was simply money. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a hate crime, but the hate-crime MOTIVE lies with the people who hired him.
Based on the information in the article, I suspect the second part of the investigation would be more a RCMP thing, possibly CSIS. If so, charges can be trickier, because as far as I know those agencies are very careful about what they’re willing to reveal in court.
Couple of things.
The Sopranos analogy involving Christopher doesn’t apply – those guys and the people who ordered this arson used some random kid (remember those stories about petty criminals being recruited to do arson, extortion, etc., online?) to break a window and light a fire. It’s unlikely that the kid has much in the way of useful information, probably not even the real name of the person who hired him.
Second, I would also assume that the kid’s being a minor makes it harder for the Crown (whether local prosecutors, RCMP, CSIS, whoever) to compel him to share more information.
To come back to the Sopranos, you may recall a scene where the local DA arrests Silvio and a bunch of other fairly high-up guys for running a gambling ring on Super Bowl weekend. The DA thought he was all that for the big arrest (“popcorn headlines,” Silvio said). On the Monday, the US Attorney shows up to the DA’s office to explain to him that the basically meaningless gambling charges (again, Silvio: “Last year I made bail so fast my soup was still warm when i got home”) was going to undermine the much bigger racketeering case the federal government was building against Tony Soprano. Throwing the book at this one basically useless kid won’t accomplish anything, least of all make the Jewish community safer.
@Blork – If you believe his story, that is. Do you find an opiate addict pothead who would firebomb any building for people he just met at a party to be an entirely credible witness? Do you really believe that he didn’t realise a building with Hebrew writing and a menorah on it was something Jewish? Or that he doesn’t remember anything about the car he was driven in? Or about anything else useful? Compared to this guy John Poindexter had a memory like a steel trap.
I think he knows exactly what he did, and he knew when he was doing it, and that he used this opportunity to try to beg his way out of going to jail for longer than a few months. Remember Alexandre Bissonnette? He went from telling a prison social worker “I regret not having killed more people” to “Every minute of my existence I bitterly regret what I did” … “I am ashamed of what I did.” He got 25 to life, and deserved far worse.
Here’s how you figure out if this was a hate crime – did someone bomb a synagogue? If yes, then yes. Substitute “synagogue” with “mosque” and see if it still works. It does! Same with “black church”, and “abortion clinic”. Try it with “car dealership” – doesn’t stick.
Also, it seems there is still a group of people out there with $15,000 burning a hole in their pocket while so many synagogues remain unfirebombed.
Joey, if you read what I said you’d see that my analogy does apply. I’m not saying this kid is like Christopher; I’m saying the opposite.
Bob, it doesn’t matter what I believe. I don’t even have any beliefs about this because I didn’t sit through the trial. I’m only addressing what the judge appears to believe, by way of understanding the sentence imposed.
Given the paltry evidence we get via a couple of articles, it seems like a credible story. But it’s not for me or anyone in this thread to say because none of us saw the evidence or heard the testimony.
Regarding “Do you really believe that he didn’t realise a building with Hebrew writing and a menorah on it was something Jewish?” I would guess that he DID realize it was a Jewish building, but only when they got there and by then he was committed. He agreed to firebomb something, drove in the car with the people commissioning the work all the way out to DDO — people who no doubt are much scarier than this kid is — and only then realized what the target was. By then it’s too late to back out lest you get beaten or worse. So he did a half-assed job and got paid less than half of the agreed sum for not doing it right.
This isn’t a movie. This isn’t a showdown between gritty cowboys. This is one dumb kid in a car with some scary people and he’s thinking he’d better do what they say.
It’s a perfectly credible story, and my only belief is that I believe he was able to convince the judge of that. Given that the judge saw the evidence and the testimony (and I did not) I’m also willing to believe that he probably made the right decision.
I can understand why you might choose not to prosecute a stooge for a hate crime here on a practical level but I’m unconvinced that it doesn’t count.
For instance, for mischief in the criminal code:
Everyone who commits mischief in relation to property described in any of paragraphs (4.101)(a) to (d), if the commission of the mischief is motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression or mental or physical disability,
The commission IS motivated by hate. The motivation is from the people who hired him, but it’s right there, and it doesn’t seem to exclude this scenario.
He claims to have been paid to commit a crime.
Who has that much money to create mischief?
I hope we find out who his sponsor was. May have been a false flag. We don’t know.
Plenty of good advice Wednesday for coping with the heat wave and the trials of Moving Day, if you can even find a new place to move to.
Radio-Canada asks whether Quebec’s new “affordable” apartments are actually affordable.
Canada Day festivities are happening at the Old Port all day, Le Devoir cheerfully noting that the day is taking place in the face of separatist movements in more than one province.
Just the standard arguing about definitions of “affordable” based on whom it refers to. For a home to be affordable for everyone it needs to be $0 a month. The government, and most researchers, put it at a percentage of people’s incomes, and there is a subsidy in some cases here to bring down the rent to whatever fits that for each renter. (Here I see 25%, I’ve also seen 35%, depends on pre- or post-tax and transfer.) But for homes without the percentage subsidy it’ll always not be affordable for some, and percentage means we can’t talk about a fixed number being affordable, it’s always in relation to each individual.
In common parlance one may think it’s one number (say, median rent), another may think another (say, median asking rent) and a third may think a third (say, half of median rent, or a quarter, or what they paid when they were in university). But if you have no income you either need rent to be $0 or it’s not affordable to you and you’re living on the streets or with someone generous you know. So what is a useful metric for us as a society to talk about? I can see many arguments for many options, but “affordable for whomat?” has become a bit of a meme and the lack of any ability to have a shared understanding of our vocabulary is not helped by these constant snipes back and forth in these lazy stories.
From a public policy perspective, I think we approach this the wrong way. Rather than try and establish an affordability threshold, which will always be too complex to get down to a single number (for all the reasons Nicholas explains), we would be better off to let the market determine prices and focus ‘affordability’ efforts on ensuring everyone has the capacity to rent an apartment that meets their needs. We have countless examples of how attempts to establish ‘affordable’ dwellings are completely negated by shady promoters, incoherent public policy, and red tape. Giving people money is a lot easier. And if the AI hype is indeed real, we’ll have a skeleton of a UBI in place.
1000% agree with Joey. It’s so much easier to just give people money. The epitome of the alternative was former Montrealer Kamala Harris’s policy proposal to give student loan forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients (bursaries for low income people) who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities. Extremely targeted, complex, administrative burdens. Allow people to build more dense housing (which we’ve banned in much of the city) and prices will fall a bit, and then give people money if they still can’t afford to live (and social services to help ensure people get the funds they are eligible for). Stop these tortured complex programs that take years to set up and then often fall apart anyway.
It’s like the Esso thing. We want the greedy developers to pay so we force them to sell below market rate or pay a fine, as if it comes out of the CEO’s chequing account. The costs are passed on to customers and that’s it. Meanwhile, any scheme that hinges on a private sector actor doing something against their own benefit will inevitably fail. So why bother? The next Projet mayor could be INCREDIBLE if they bothered to learn from their mistakes.
Heritage Montreal is critical of the gutting of a downtown bank building by a retail business.
The same bank building we discussed here.
The Camillien-Houde is to be resurfaced this month toward September’s road cycling championship.
Well I guess cutting off road access to the city’s iconic downtown park at the height of summer for the benefit of a sports event in the fall is a win for someone. I guess it will be a lot easier to find picnic spots at Beaver Lake without all the big families.
A memorial service will be held July 7 at the Bell Centre for Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, killed in the line of duty last week.
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