The Decibel - The landmark decision on white nationalist terrorism

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Since the murder of a Muslim family by a self-described white nationalist in London, Ont. in 2021, debate has raged over whether this crime was an act of terrorism under Canadian law. Last week’s Ontario Superior Court ruling has settled the matter: Nathaniel Veltman’s targeted attacks on the Afzaal family is a ‘textbook’ example of terrorism.Globe reporter Colin Freeze has been covering the case and joins The Decibel to explain the precedent-setting decision, why defining terrorism matters in Canada, and what this means in protecting the victims of terrorist crimes.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Before we start, a warning. Today's episode contains descriptions of violence. On the evening of June 6th, 2021, Nathaniel Veltman was driving his truck on the streets of London, Ontario. He spotted a family that he thought looked Muslim. They were out for a walk. He passed them, then did a U-turn, drove up onto the sidewalk, and accelerated towards them. He killed four members of the Afzal family. Grandmother Talat, parents Salman and Madia, and their teenage daughter Yamna. The sole survivor, their nine-year-old son, was badly injured. Then, Veltman drove seven kilometers to a mall, where he parked and got out of his truck.

He walked over to a taxi driver who was sitting in his cab. Please find an ambulance. Hello there, yes, this is one truck. I'm a cab driver in Kirihermov. Okay, what's going on? What's the emergency? No, no, no, there is a truck here and he said he hears somebody. There's a truck? What kind of truck is it? It's a Ram 1500. It's a black truck?

Yes, yes. What's the plate on it? The plate is... It's me, it was me. It was me that did it. Come around to me. Okay, what's the plate on the truck? Can you ask him his name? I don't know, but it was me that tried things with him. Get over in this car. Okay, what's your name?

Jake Beltman. Are you injured? Nope, I did it on purpose. Why did you do it on purpose? That's a f*** over here, would you? Why did you do it on purpose? In November, Beltman was found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. And then, last week, a judge made a precedent-setting decision about this crime.

That it was an act of terrorism. Globe reporter Colin Fries is here today to talk about it. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Colin, thank you for being here today. Thank you. Okay, so on Thursday of last week, February 22nd, Veltman's trial wrapped up. And Colin, you were actually there in the courtroom for this. So what was the mood like just before the decision was announced? It was a really interesting courtroom. I mean, it was packed.

A lot of the people watching were family members of the victims. And in walks Nathaniel Veltman, dressed in black, clutching a water bottle, sighing. Everybody kind of knew how this was going to go, but it was important sort of spectacle to see Justice Renee Pomerantz pass judgment on him as a terrorist. Yeah. So Justice Renee Pomerantz, she's the presiding judge, and she ruled that his actions in the murder of the Afzal family was an act of terrorism.

But what exactly did she say in her decision, Colin? Right. So because a jury had convicted Veltman of murder last fall, the only question at the sentencing hearing was, would this be seen as a regular criminal code mass murder or a terrorist mass murder? And the judge decided the latter. And the ruling she came up with affirms the necessity of courts condemning terrorist crimes as such in open court. She said that terrorist activity has a uniquely pernicious character.

All crimes offend the social order. Terrorist activity seeks to overthrow the social order. So it was really a very strong denunciation of Veltman's crimes and terrorism in general as something that exists in a special sort of realm in the prosecutorial aspect of the criminal justice system. Does this affect his sentence at all? No, his sentence was set. Under Canadian law,

the maximum sentence you can receive is a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years. You get that if you're convicted of first degree murder. And last fall, Veltman was convicted of four counts of first degree murder and also attempted murder. That, incidentally, was seen as a sort of fifth life sentence, but it's all concurrent. So he's now 23. He'll be in jail till his mid 40s, at least. So he's got this life sentence. Do we know if Veltman will appeal that sentencing decision, though?

No, no. His defense counsel doesn't know if they're going to do that at this point. They didn't have a chance to talk to Veltman about it after court yesterday. OK, Colin, let's come back to the terrorism part here, because this is really the significant thing of this decision. But I guess how would you summarize the importance of this decision, Colin, like in a big picture way? How significant is this? I think it's very significant. I think what this is, is a green light for police and prosecutors

across the country to go after people who may have been once considered borderline in terms of their ties to terrorism before. Terrorism laws have been on the books for nearly a quarter century in Canada. The vast majority, I think in excess of 90%, have been against Al-Qaeda or ISIS types, people alleged to have ties to those sorts of groups. Today, we're faced with a new kind of threat, a sort of diffuse array of ideologically motivated violent extremism, as they call it, IMVE. You know, people are lashing out violently for a variety of causes that are very fringe until they're not, and they start causing violence in the streets. You said IMVE. Can you just repeat what that actually stands for, their call?

Right. So this is what our federal security agencies, they call, you know, the neo-terrorism, terrorism 2.0, if I'll call it, ideologically motivated violent extremism. This is sort of a basket term for a bunch of causes, often it's lone wolf actors with no ties to cohesive groups, sort of self-radicalized through online readings or whatever. And maybe it's racism and maybe it's Islamophobia or maybe it's misogyny, but they will strike out at people in the streets at random. And we've seen this in Canada several times over now. And so terrorism is being applied to white nationalism, essentially, in this case, or a version of that. Right. Veltman had his own sort of version of white

nationalism. The evidence showed he consumed a lot of manifestos of mass shooters in other places and other times who espouse those views, views like white replacement theory, where mass immigration is going to dilute the uniquely European character of Western society. I don't subscribe to that point of view. I'm just saying that's what that point of view is. And for Veltman and his ilk, the idea was that indiscriminate attacks on Muslims could frighten them into staying away from countries like Canada and thus restore the European dominant culture. It's a horrendous conspiracy-driven view of the world. It's awful

and deplorable. And that's what the judge said in court on Thursday. It's not just any crime. It's an exceptionally heinous and deplorable crime that needs to be called out frontally by people like herself and in courts across the country. So we're getting into this a little bit, talking kind of about the, you know, the motivation behind what he did. But since this is a landmark ruling, Colin, maybe we can get into some of the evidence a little bit more here. So what are the key pieces of evidence that led the judge to her decision? He wrote manifestos. He consumed manifestos.

He made that easy for investigators to find. He bought his truck a few weeks before his attack. The first thing he really did with that truck was to see a Muslim family who he didn't know at an intersection on a summer's evening stroll. And when police arrest him moments after that attack, he says, you know, I did this for the ideology I subscribe to, that I'm against Muslims and mass immigration. And he's seen wearing, I think, a T-shirt and a stylized Christian cross. And when police said, you know, was your crime politically motivated? He says, yeah, my crime was politically motivated, 100%.

So, you know, Veltman, in his own words and actions, was clearly intent on terrorizing people to affect political changes. And was Nathaniel Veltman actually a member of a white nationalist group? Not per se. I mean, he was never charged with participation in any terrorism group, and that became an issue at trial. Defense lawyers said, well, you know, he never sent manifestos to anybody. He had no framework that he fit into. How can he be a terrorist? And the prosecutor said, well, in his words and actions and deeds, he showed he was a

terrorist. And the judge addressed this directly, finding that Veltman did keep his thoughts and plans to himself, that he didn't plug into a larger framework. And this was by design. If you listen to his post-arrest interview, he told detectives that he refrained from posting his views for fear that he would be caught before he could do something, that it was tactical, a conscious decision not to be part of a larger framework because that would increase his exposure to being arrested before he hashed his plans. We're going to talk more about the terrorism stuff in depth, Colin,

but I just want to go back to the decision last week and you being there at the courthouse. What did people say outside of the courthouse after the decision? I guess specifically I'm thinking about relatives of the victims. The relatives were so powerful in their statements outside the courtroom and also in their victim impact statements, which they made dozens of impact statements last month. In general, the uncles, aunts, parents of the adult members of the Afzal family that were killed talked about how they were terrorized, right? That white nationalism is a hidden scourge in Canadian society, that their family members were taken from them by Nathaniel Veltman. That attack shattered the dreams of Canada as being a welcoming, pluralistic, tolerant society.

And in that way, they are still deeply in grief and will be for all of their lives. There are so many people who will daily go through some element of June 6th, that closure is not possible. What is possible is to channel June 6th into positive change. They seem to take a degree of consolation from the fact there is a ruling now denouncing the existence of white nationalism in Canada and calling out Nathaniel Veltman as one of its henchmen.

And of course, one of the members of the family, the son, did survive. So does he have family around him? Do we know? Yeah, he's nine years old at the time of the attack. This boy survived the attack that killed his mother, his father, his sister, his grandmother. There was testimony in the victim impact statements about him showing up for the, for all their funeral and, uh, going from a coffin

to coffin to coffin to coffin in a wheelchair. So it's, um, it's horrible to think about him. He, uh, he gave his own victim impact statement to the court. You know, he says, the offense is maybe very sad at the fact I can't talk to my family anymore and make new memories with them. I won't be able to have fun with them anymore. I won't be able to talk with Yamna, my sister, anymore. Hug Ami, go to prayer with Baba, Dad, or make art with Daddy Jean. I won't be able to see Yamuna turn 18.

I won't be able to go to school one day with Yamuna and admire the mural she painted. And, you know, the judge juxtaposed that with Feltman's own admissions in his post-arrest interview where he basically said children had to be collateral damage in his attack if he wanted to get his message across. I think as Feltman put it, I had to be brutal. That's how he felt immediately moments after his attack anyway.

I should say the family members at the victim impact statement stage said that if Veltman had actually gotten to know the people that he killed, that if he had had a cup of tea with them, he would have seen what an exceptional family they were. And he would have liked them. They've been evocatively remembered by their family members and now in the judicial ruling. So I think their life stories will resonate, I think, for some time. We'll be back in a minute. Colin, I think we should look a little deeper now at the laws around terrorism in Canada. So when did we first introduce terrorism laws? Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I looked at Veltman's birth date.

It's December 2000. So by the time he's about a year old, Canada's parliament passes what we call the Anti-Terrorism Act. And when that act is passed, it passes in a matter of weeks. And at the time, there was a societal consensus that terrorism was a great scourge on our society and needed to be combated with new laws, new police teams, new techniques. So this is essentially in response to 9-11. Yeah, 9-11, right? In the wake of that attack, the United States and its allies, including Canada, say, you know what? It's all hands on deck.

We're not going to let this happen again. So we will put in place an array of measures, including new legislation, so that police and prosecutors have a green light to go after terrorists. And so how do our laws then actually define terrorism? Right. So terrorism is any form of sort of religious, political, or ideological violence where somebody will try to intimidate the population as a whole or a segment of the population to compel changes. Terrorism is not tied to any particular groups.

That's also something that appears in the judicial ruling is the prospect that these sort of sinister ideologies are breaking out all over the place here and they will radicalize people sort of scattershot and how we as a society counter that threat is a real issue going forward. Let's parse this a little bit here, Colin. How are terrorism acts then different from like hate crimes in Canada? So how is that differentiated in our criminal code? Yeah. I mean, I think what the hate criminal lacks and what the terrorist has is the long-term view. A hate crime can be just simply, I don't like a person of this particular religion or race and I'm lashing out at them. You're not trying to affect change, you're just lashing out.

Okay, so our terrorism laws are brought in 2001. Can you give us an example, I guess, of a past crime where people were charged with terrorism? I've been around for a while. So I watched the first terrorism cases go through the courts, right? So a prominent prosecution was the so called Toronto 18 prosecution, where a group of mostly teenagers were charged with participating in a terrorist group by running jihadi training camps. And there was a core group of about four suspects, I believe, who were plotting out bombings with an eye to expressing grievances against Canada's policy then of supporting the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban

and oust Al-Qaeda from that country. Okay, so that's an example where it was used. But I also want to ask you, Colin, about situations where people weren't charged with terrorism, but the attacks are often talked about as terrorism. So, of course, I'm thinking about Alex Bissonette, who killed six Muslim men in a Quebec City mosque back in 2017, or Alec Manassian, who killed 10 people in Toronto in that van attack in 2018. So they weren't charged with terrorism. Why not? That's a good question. It remains a good question today. You know, both Manassian and Bissonnette were sort of charged with regular murder. And regular murder, once you're prosecuted and convicted and it was undeniable, is enough to put you away for life.

And I think at the time, prosecutors saw that as sufficient. Why go the extra mile and charge them with terrorism if it doesn't lead to any sort of sentencing enhancement? That was the thinking of the 2010s when you see those cases in the rearview mirror. I think the thing a lot of people see, though, is like, you know, we talked about the Toronto 18. These were supporters of Al Qaeda. But when we talk about the van attack or the mosque shooting in Quebec City, these are both white guys. Like, does that play into things here? Do we have a sense? This is a criticism that's been raised by some academics in the Muslim community for a long time, is that like, at a certain point, the blinders went on and all of our criminal justice system was solely focused for a long time on seemingly one iteration of

the terrorist threat right and the al-qaeda and isis threat is real and it's not gone away but while it was still percolating this white nationalist what justice pomerantz calls right wing extremism thing was sort of growing like a mushroom in the dark and morphing. And law enforcement and intelligence agencies just weren't there. I think Medea's mother, the dead mother in Veltman's attack, talked very vocatively about how Veltman was not as lone, alone wolf as you might think he was. He was fed by whispers and rumors and internet conspiracy theories, which are getting traction. He's the one who's being presented as the terrorist, but there's more out there.

So now that our anti-terrorism toolkit is going where the threat is going, which is to these extremist actors like Nathaniel Veltman. And we're talking about this because this is a significant case here, but Veltman actually isn't the first lone wolf attacker to be convicted of terrorism, right, Colin? We saw something late last year as well. Right. So late last year, there was a teenager. He was commonly referred to as OS when he had the full protection of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

In 2020, he went into a Toronto massage parlor with a sword. And he killed one woman and he attacked another one. And he was also, like Manassian, an acolyte of the incel movement. And the judge ruled, you did engage in terrorist activity. You wanted to sort of use your attack to spur other copycat attacks. And in furtherance of this rather awful and sinister ideology you're part of. So that's terrorism. And that had some real implications because that teenager, Vember, I believe, was sentenced as an adult. He got a full life sentence and he won't be getting up from behind bars for many, many years like Nathaniel Veltman. Just very lastly here, Colin, I mean, you know,

looking at all of this as a whole, what have legal experts said might be the effect of this decision in the Veltman case going forward? So what we now have are rulings, plural. A Veltman ruling sort of builds off the previous one in the case I just mentioned. We have rulings sort of giving prosecutors and police a roadmap to future prosecutions, right? Some of which are already in the works. There's other white nationalists being charged with terrorism in Canada right now. And sort of what these rulings affirm is that, you know, don't get locked into one style, you know, one flavor of terrorism or the other. It's all bad. It's all

deadly. It all deserves a denunciation in open courts. What Pomerantz said in particular is that, you know, the justice, yeah, the justice in London said there's a necessary social utility in using the courts and the criminal justice system to shout down terrorism and these sort of awful ideologies, which many of us will overlook in the course of our day-to-day lives. And by denouncing the extremist ideologies, which can metastasize like a cancer, she said, we can also affirm the values we all believe in as Canadians, such as tolerance and inclusivity and that everybody's on an equal footing regardless of their race or religion or gender identity.

That's fairly, you know, fundamental. And so she has a fairly evocative ruling sort of affirming that and saying, you know what, here's what terrorist activity is under the criminal code. Here's how you get a conviction. Here's what needs to be satisfied. So it's a green light, essentially. Colin, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Yeah, thank you. a conviction. Here's what needs to be satisfied. So it's a green light, essentially. Colin, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.