Toronto: Arrests Made Following Multiple Anti-Muslim Attacks
Canadian police arrested a man who tried to crash into Muslim worshippers at two mosques in the Greater Toronto Area, and an "anti-Muslim, hate-motivated" probe was launched regarding the incident.
Police said they were called to services at a Toronto mosque after a man allegedly drove his car into the parking lot and attempted to strike worshippers as well as other vehicles.
The driver then sped away and went to another mosque and repeated the same actions. The incidents occurred on April 5 around 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m., police said.
The suspect then drove to the Scarborough shopping mall, where he entered and accosted several shoppers in a threatening way and shouted anti-Muslim comments.
A 28-year-old man was arrested and charged with two counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, five counts of criminal harassment, uttering threats of bodily harm, assault, and indecent acts in a public place and insulting others.
Police also ended up charging the suspect with another incident on April 7 at a mosque in the nearby city of Markham.
In a separate incident in the city of Kitchener about 100 kilometers (62.1 miles) west of Toronto, police charged a 27-year-old woman after an alleged hate-motivated attack that occurred as people waited in line at a driving test center on Wednesday.
Mifrah Abid, the co-ordinator of the Together Against Islamophobia program for the Coalition of Muslim Women in the area, posted a video on Twitter in which she confronted a woman.
She accused the woman of "making a racist comment about brown people." The woman denied the accusation, then lunged forward and seized Abid's phone and threw it at her.
A second video taken by another person showed the altercation.
Police charged the suspect with assault, assault with a weapon and theft under $CAN5,000 ($US3,700).
Source: Anadolu Agency
