In Canada, a judge convicts an Incel murderer as a terrorist
The teenager lay next to his bloody sword when police arrested him outside Massage parlor in Toronto where one woman was stabbed to death and another seriously injured.
A sexist nickname was engraved on the sword and a note promoting the ideology of violence against women was found in the teenager’s pocket.
With the evidence stacked against him, he pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder. But a Canadian judge ruled that the attacks were acts of terrorism, in part because the teen wanted to send a message that he hated women.
On Tuesday, the judge, Justice Suhail Akhtar, convicted the teenager – who was 17 at the time of the attack – to life in prison, although he would be eligible for parole after 10 years. Under Canadian juvenile justice legislation, his name cannot be published.
The case marks the first time in Canada that the murder of a woman killed because of her gender has been prosecuted as an act of terrorism, a charge that extends the term of a prison sentence.
In a country grappling with recent high-profile attacks on women, the case underlines how Canada is reconsidering the classification of some violent acts as terrorism.
The teen embraced the ideology of an online group whose members call themselves incels, or “involuntary celibates,” who discredit women and blame them for denying incels what they believe is their right to sex.
Supporters of the group have launched other attacks in Canada over the years, including a deadly rampage five years ago in Toronto in which a man drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians, killing 10 people and injuring 16 others .
The incel ideology has been linked to the killing or wounding of 110 people in the United States and Canada since 2014, according to Canadian Intelligence, which in a report called incel attacks a “growing and concerning area of gender-based violence.” ”
Canada has typically reserved terrorism charges for religious extremists inspired by Al Qaeda and similar groups. But the judge overseeing the Toronto massage parlor case said in a ruling that the defendant “was motivated by incel ideology and wanted to send a message to society that incels were willing to kill and commit violence.”
The teenager admitted this killing Ashley Arzaga, 24, and wounding another woman, whose name cannot be published due to a court order.
After the suspect’s guilty plea, prosecutors asked to classify the attacks as terrorism to extend his possible prison sentence. Otherwise he could have been jailed for a maximum of ten years.
The teenager’s lawyers argued that there was no evidence that their client intended to intimidate a large portion of the public and that the suspect’s ideology had not reached the level of terrorism.
At an earlier sentencing hearing in October, the defendant, reading from a handwritten piece of paper, said, “I don’t hate women or anyone,” adding that he wished he could “travel back in time and be on a could somehow talk in my earlier life’. yourself.”
Ms Arzaga’s sister, who sat in court for part of the trial and asked prosecutors to be identified publicly only by her initials, provided a victim impact statement that was read out in court.
“I think the most emotionally draining part of all is watching my niece celebrate Mother’s Day at the cemetery,” the statement said.
The country’s handling of the case reflects a growing movement in Latin America to more aggressively tackle the murder of women in the region. United Nations data shows that these have reached crisis levels. At least 18 countries have passed laws to protect women by creating a class of murder cases known as femicide, adding harsher penalties and drawing more law enforcement attention to the issue.
In February 2020, the Toronto teen targeted a massage parlor called Crown Spa, where Ms. Arzaga, a woman he had never met, worked the front desk, according to the judge presiding over his trial. He pulled a 17-inch knife, described in court as a sword, from under his jacket pocket and stabbed Ms Arzaga 42 times.
Her screams caused a female manager to rush to the front desk, where the teen also stabbed her in the chest while shouting misogynistic comments, and cut off part of her finger. The manager wrestled the teen’s sword from him and stabbed him in the back, the judge said.
The teen came out of the spa and lay on the sidewalk with the sword next to him. He had ‘THOT slayer’ written on the sword. THOT is a crude term often used in the incel community to demean women, according to an expert who testified at the trial.
The defendant also told paramedics after the attack that he wanted to kill everyone in the spa. “I’m glad I have one,” he told them, according to the judge’s ruling.
In the teen’s pocket, police found a plastic bag containing a knife-sharpening stone, a driver’s license and a piece of paper with the words “Long Live the Incel Rebellion,” a reference to one of the worst mass murders in Canadian history.
The perpetrator of that attack, Alek Minassian, a student, made incels a household name after he drove a rental van into pedestrians on a busy Toronto street in 2018.
Mr. Minassian was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, but he was not charged with terrorism.
Perhaps the most high-profile attack on women in Canada was the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, in which a gunman shot and killed fourteen women and injured another twelve people before turning the gun on himself.
Canadian terrorism prosecutions differ from other types of criminal prosecutions. Typically, a suspect’s intent to commit a crime to intimidate and frighten the public is part of the standard for attributing guilt, said Leah West, a law professor at Carleton University in Ottawa and co-author of a book. paper about how forms of extremism like incel violence fit into Canada’s terrorism laws.
Canadian prosecutors must also prove that the suspect was motivated by a specific ideology, Prof. West said, although the law is not clear on what qualifies as ideology.
“We have this kind of amorphous term that we don’t really know what it means, and it’s a key element in proving that someone has committed terrorism,” Prof. West said.
Still, some legal experts say pursuing terrorism charges is justified to underscore how dangerous some ideas can be and what they can cause.
But some women’s groups and anti-violence advocates say that relying on a terrorism strategy to tackle attitudes that promote misogyny can obscure the severity of other acts of violence against women, which are far more common.
“If a woman is murdered by her domestic partner, you still have a dead woman and we don’t normally call that terrorism,” says Janine Benedet, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, “even though that is also an expression of sexism and an expression of misogyny.”