Islam and Psychotic Violence

"In the past seven months, Najdi was on police radar after witnessing the shooting death of 21-year-old Sharif Said. Said was gunned down in the middle of Tremblay Road in early May 2015.
Police arrested Najdi on May 6 alongside the man now accused of killing Said, Khalid “AJ” Mohammad, and his alleged getaway driver, Abdulaziz Abdullah. Najdi was released without any charges."
"It was not yet known if Najdi’s death was directly connected to that killing, but at the time, police had immediate concerns for Najdi’s safety and were increasingly aware there could be gangland retribution for his co-operating with the investigation."
"Those concerns appeared warranted when Najdi’s family home was shot at last week. Police found evidence of two bullets having passed through the front window and into the home on Prince Albert Street in Overbrook. That shooting, in which no one was injured, is alleged to have happened on Jan. 5."
"On Friday, a member of Najdi’s family went to police to report the shooting at the home. On Saturday, police publicly appealed for information about the incident without naming Najdi as the suspected target. On Sunday night, Mohamed Najdi was dead in Manor Park."
Shaamini Yogaretnam, Ottawa Citizen, January 12, 2016

Investigators collect evidence at the scene of Ottawa's first homicide of 2016 on the morning of January 11, 2016. (CBC)

It took eleven days into a new year for the first homicide of the year to occur in Ottawa. The second homicide occurred several weeks later, on January 30, when a 22-year-old ordered to cut all contact with a terrorism recruiter was shot in the chest inside the Somali Shifa restaurant in a strip mall and his cousin Marwan Arab, 20, was shot dead; Ayyub Arab has survived. Police are investigating and have stated that some of the patrons are co-operating and others are not.

Marwan Arab was in Canada from his native Libya, attending school. His cousin Ayyub, who survived the shooting is on the executive of the Muslim Students' Association where he met Awso Peshdary, 25, charged by the RCMP with participating in the activity of a terrorist group, facilitating an activity for a terrorist group and conspiring to participate or to contribute in an activity of a terrorist group.

CTV Ottawa

Ottawa Police are investigating the city's second homicide of 2016 after a shooting in the Pinecrest area

Peshdary, Carlos and Ashton Larmond and Suliman Mohamed were arrested and charged with terrorism related activities, with Peshdary identified as a key recruiter and jihadist financier.  That old adage that you are known by the company you keep has resonance, although the Arab family is denying that it was their son and cousin who were the targets of the shooting, claiming them to have been innocent of any criminal activity.

The death of Marwan, however, marks the second violent fatality in the city so far this year, and as coincidence has it, all those involved in these violent episodes happen to be Muslim. Disproportionately, Muslims and Arabs appear regularly in the news relating to crime and violence, rather surprising since Islam is a religion of peace.

For two men who were wrongly targeted, according to their family members, mourning the death of one, and concerned that neither son nor cousin be considered criminal deviants, it seems odd to read that Marwan and Ayyab, bosom buddies s well as relatives, were both jointly charged with committing theft under $5,000 and both were due to appear in court next week. Marwan, now deceased, served four days in jail for breaching bail conditions in December.

The narrative is not only a Canadian one; the recent prison breakout from the Central Men's prison in Santa Ana, California where three inmates won their freedom by escaping through air vents and plumbing tunnels on January 22, and later took a taxi driver as a hostage, had among them one Hossein Nayeri who is suspected of having masterminded the prison breakout. 

Inmates Jonathan Tieu, 20, Hossein Nayeri, 37, and Bac Duong, 43, left to right, are seen in an undated combination photo released by the Orange County, California, Sheriff's Department. Orange County Sheriff's Department/Handout via Reuters

All three are back in custody but while they were circulating in public, Nayeri was intent on killing the hostage, while another escapee resisted that, eventually surrendering himself to police after he had driven the hostage back to the point where the taxi driver had been abducted. Tellingly, a prison English teacher, Nooshafarin Ravaghi, who conducted an affair with Nayeri in prison, is suspected of having supplied him with Google maps helpful to the escape route.