Dr. Mohamed Elmasry In what has become worldwide news, a young man on April 23 drove a van, starting at Finch Avenue in North York and, careened along the west sidewalk of Yonge St. - Toronto's main street – for as much as two kilometres, killing 10 people and injuring 14 others. The attack was eerily similar to an attack in Nice, France, on Bastille Day in 2016, when a man in a 19-tonne truck drove through crowds celebrating the national holiday, killing 86 people. And this is but one such similar incident. Last June, three men in a van smashed into pedestrians on London Bridge and went to the Borough Market district, stabbing people in the streets and pubs before police brought them down. Eight people were killed and 48 injured. A few months earlier, a rejected asylum seeker, who claimed to be affiliated with the Islamic State, hijacked a van and drove it into a crowd, killing five people and severely wounding 14 more. Meanwhile, in Toronto, during a brief standoff between the suspect and a police officer, near the scene of the attack - which began at Finch and Yonge streets in Toronto, and ended about two kilometres south at Sheppard and Finch - the suspect told the officer to shoot him. Fortunately the officer was able to bring down the suspect without shooting him. Alek Minassian, 25, - a student at Seneca College in Toronto from 2011 until 2018, where he was also listed as a research assistant with a software development project on Seneca website - is now charged with10 counts of first degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. Every person in Toronto must have it in the back of their mind that but for the grace of God, they could have been one of the victims, killed or seriously injured by a van travelling as fast as 70 kilometres per hour along a busy sidewalk. It follows that everyone wants to know why anyone would do this and, thus speculation is ubiquitous. Tellingly - perhaps in more ways than one - a message that appeared on Mr. Minassian's Facebook account, as the tragedy was happening, heaped praise on Elliot Rodger, a mass murderer who, in 2014, stabbed and shot his way to fame, killing six people near the University of California, Santa Barbara. Subsequently, Mr. Rodger injured another 13 people by striking them with his BMW, while in the midst of a gun fight with police. Mr. Rodger then killed himself before he could be arrested. He claimed to belong to a group called Incel, which stands for involuntarily celibate, where young men aired their grievances about their lack of sexual activity and attractiveness to women, leading them to advocate misogyny and violence against women, reminiscent of Mark Lepine, the perpetrator of the 1989 Montreal massacre. The Facebook post on Mr. Minassian's Facebook page – which neither police nor anyone else is yet prepared to claim was posted by Mr. Minassian, said "The Incel Rebellion has already begun!" All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!" In a YouTube video Mr. Rodger posted before his arrest, he described himself as a virgin who wanted to exact revenge on women. The post on Mr. Minassian's Facebook page also referred to himself as "Private Infantry 00010. In late August 2017 Mr. Minassian was a new recruit in the Canadian military, before being granted permission to leave after 16 days of recruit training. He did his training at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School at the Saint-Jean Garrison in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., where all new recruits begin their military careers. Military sources confirmed that 00010 was Mr. Minassian's number while in training. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, citing privacy reasons, refused to comment on Mr. Minassian's time in the military, other than to say there were no red flags when the new recruit signed on. While Toronto police have maintained from the beginning that they had no prior knowledge of Mr. Minassian, CBS News was first to report Mr. Minassian's identity, within hours of the attack. Moreover, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton reportedly told MSNBC that officials in Canada said Mr. Minassian was known to authorities prior to the attack as a potential terror suspect. CNN also reported Mr. Bratton's statement. I did not see Mr. Bratton's statement anywhere in the Canadian media, although Christie Blatchford said in the National Post that the identification of Mr. Minassian was "ironically, made first in the United States." She added that the arrest of Mr. Minassian was one of "about 20,000 events a year where Toronto Police deal with what they call E.D. (emotionally disturbed) people, without the application of any force." It goes without saying that it's highly unlikely that the identity of any of these 20,000 people per year was first reported in the United States. Meanwhile, Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale said he had consulted with federal police and security agencies and none think it was a national security incident. "On the basis of all available information at the present time, there appears to be no national security connection," Mr. Goodale told a large gathering of media half a block from the crime scene. However, Global News reported that Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance was being briefed in Ottawa, and some sort of alert had gone out to military bases across the country. At the time of the attack, officials from the G7 were participating in a public safety meeting in Toronto and there was no visible enhancement of security. Elsewhere, police were on high alert. Regardless of the motive of the perpetrator, Toronto has taken its place amongst important cities in developed nations where attacks of this nature can happen at any time. ---------------- Egyptian-born Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is emeritus professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. As a visiting Imam, he often represents Canadian Muslims at international faith conferences. He is the author of Spiritual Fitness® for Life – a term he coined and patented. Dr. Elmasry is also a founding editor of the online alternative news-and-views magazine, The Canadian Charger www.thecanadiancharger.com He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it."This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
