|
Follow the Middle East Forum
|
|
Did Nabil
Huruy Kill in the Name of Allah?
|
|
Share:
|
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Saudi-born
Nabil Huruy stabbed an off-duty Canadian firefighter to death in
September 2013.
|
It was early morning on the anniversary of 9/11 on September 11, 2013
when Toronto Police Constable Alexi Prodanos, working the midnight shift,
got a call at 6:00 a.m. about a 'break and entry' at the Islamic Foundation
of Toronto, popularly known as the Nugget Mosque in Scarborough.
Const. Prodanos arrived on the scene, and spoke to the caretaker. He
points to a young man walking away on Nugget Ave. carrying some bags. The
police officer detained the suspect.
He is 23-year-old Nabil Huruy, who two days later will commit a horrific
murder —repeatedly stabbing in the face and head with a kitchen knife
Dominic Parker, a Markham firefighter who also served with the 48th
Highlanders, a reserve unit of the Canadian military in Toronto.
Const. Prodanos confiscated the clothing and pair of shoes that Huruy
said he took from the donation box in the mosque, and releases him with a
warning not to trespass.
Was Nabil Huruy motivated by a
jihadi understanding of Islam?
|
Later, at the preliminary hearing on a first-degree murder charge,
Const. Prodanos would testify that when he detained Huruy, the young man
started "talking about Allah, etc."
The mosque incident is not Huruy's only contact with police on that 9/11
anniversary.
At 3:07 p.m., OPP Const. Brian Bailey receives a radio call saying
somebody is standing on the Morningside Bridge overlooking Highway 401.
Bailey spots Huruy wearing a "metal ring" around his neck, which
turns out to be from a traffic sign. Huruy tells police he "wanted a
piece of the highway because it was the Highway of Heroes," travelled
by funeral convoys of Canadian Forces personnel killed fighting the Taliban
in Afghanistan, from CFB Trenton to the coroner's office in Toronto.
An ambulance takes Huruy to Centenary Hospital where he is examined
briefly and released. He is never taken into custody.
Two days later, on the night of September 13, 2013, Huruy heads to Rotana
Café in Toronto's Danforth and Coxwell area where he ran into Dominic
Parker playing cards with other café patrons.
Dominic
Parker, seen here in an undated family photograph.
|
Just after midnight, Huruy got up and attacked the off-duty firefighter,
straddling him and stabbing him repeatedly, the final blow driving the
knife blade all the way into Parker's left jaw, between the ear and chin.
Two days later Parker died in hospital and Huruy was charged with
first-degree murder.
Earlier this month, Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer found Huruy
not criminally responsible in the stabbing death of the firefighter cum
reserve soldier.
In his ruling, Nordheimer said experts concluded that Huruy likely
suffers from schizophrenia and did not know his actions were morally wrong.
One question left unspoken and unaddressed is the role religion might
have played in the actions or schizophrenia of Nabil Huruy.
Never in the court proceedings did anybody say that the events began on
the anniversary of the al-Qaida terrorist attacks against the United
States. Evidence that Huruy was "talking about Allah, etc." was
never referred to again. Instead of "Highway of Heroes," many
police witnesses exclusively used the term "Highway 401." At no
point in the proceedings was Parker's status as a reserve soldier
mentioned.
As 2015 draws to a close, the number of terrorist killings this year has
reached 378, meaning there was an average of just over one terrorist attack
every day. Hundreds have died across the globe and invariably the killers
are Muslim, claiming to kill in the name of Islam and for obtaining the
pleasure of Allah.
Was Saudi-born Nabil Huruy one of the many killers motivated by a jihadi
understanding of Islam? We will never know. Perhaps we don't want to.
Tarek Fatah, a founder of the
Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine
Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment