A Canadian man was convicted of killing a Muslim family in a truck attack Islamophobia news
The 22-year-old ran over and killed four family members in 2021, leaving a nine-year-old boy orphaned.
A Canadian man influenced by white nationalist beliefs has been convicted of killing four members of a Muslim family by running over them with a pickup truck in an attack that sent waves of shock, grief and fear across the country and sparked calls for a response. Islamophobia.
Nathaniel Feltman, 22, who has criticized immigration and Islam, was found guilty on Thursday of attacking the family in the London city of Ontario in June 2021.
“He was hunting Muslims to kill them,” prosecutor Fraser Bull said in closing arguments, adding that Feltman was wearing body armor and a T-shirt bearing a crusader logo.
Salman Afzal, 46; His wife, Madiha Salman (44); Their daughter, Yamna, 15 years old; Afzal’s mother, Talaat, 74, was killed. The couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously injured but survived. The family, originally from Pakistan, had gone out for a walk near their home.
Prosecutors called the attack an act of “terrorism,” and Feltman, convicted of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder, faces life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
During the ten-week trial, the jury heard that Feltman had written a far-right book in which he described his hatred of Islam and his opposition to mass immigration and multiculturalism.
Immediately after Feltman shocked the family, he turned himself in to police and said he wanted to “send a strong message” against Muslim immigration.
“I am a white nationalist,” Feltman wrote in the statement, saying that white people “are facing genocide.” Prosecutors said he repeatedly watched video of a mass shooting by a white supremacist in New Zealand that killed 51 people.
For members of Canada’s vibrant Muslim community, the message was terrifyingly clear: “Leave this country or you and your loved ones could be next,” Paul said.
The attack, which left three generations of a family dead and pieces of the victims’ clothing pinned to the front of Feltman’s truck, was the deadliest against Canada’s Muslim community since 2017 when a man, who had consumed far-right anti-Muslim material, killed three generations of family members. . Six people were shot dead in a mosque in Quebec City.
The defense argued that Feltman suffers from numerous mental health problems and requested that the charges against him be reduced to manslaughter.
The sentencing hearing was scheduled for December 1.
“While this represents an important step toward closure for the Muslim community, and for our city more generally, it is by no means the end of that journey,” London Mayor Josh Morgan said in a social media post on Thursday.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims posted on
We feel relieved when we see the man who killed four of our members #Our family in London He was convicted of all charges.
We are relieved that justice has been served.
This is a time for reflection and solidarity. With family. With the community in London, Ontario.
we have to… pic.twitter.com/a8woB2EDK1
– National Council for Childhood (@nccm) November 16, 2023
