Canada man arrested after driving car at worshippers at 2 mosques

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Canada (AA) – A man who drove his car at worshippers at two Toronto mosques in Canada has been arrested after an “anti-Muslim, hate motivated investigation,” it was reported Thursday.

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 when 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 next drove to a nearby shopping mall, where he entered and accosted several shoppers in a threatening way and shouted anti-Islamic 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 km 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 women.” 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).