Crime and Islam

"I heard someone slap someone, skin on skin. There was about two minutes of banging in the apartment, then nothing."
"It was unusual [the banging] only [because] it lasted two minutes. I didn't know she was in danger or I would have helped her."
"It's a good thing [the mother] never put him [18-month-old child] in a playpen or crib. He would have died, because he wouldn't have had access to food or drink."
Marcy Chabot, apartment resident, Burnside Avenue, Ottawa

Ottawa police. Tony Caldwell / Postmedia

Ms. Chabot thought that the neighbour with whom she had experienced so many disagreeable encounters seemed to be very quiet, unlike what usually pertained with the woman. Even her child, a little boy of two years of age was quiet. She was more accustomed to the child's mother being abusive, screaming, swearing, pounding on her door, forcing Ms. Chabot to call police on such occasions. Nothing, however, alerted her to the fact that something was seriously wrong in that apartment.

It was quiet, and she enjoyed the unusual serenity. She made no link between the banging she had heard on the mother's living room wall of her apartment, adjoining her own bedroom wall in her apartment. The apartment was known for its paper-thin walls and residents had become accustomed to hearing sounds from their neighbours. As for the banging, the abusive woman had often banged on the walls, sometimes for fairly long periods of time.

And then, ten days later, the fifth-floor apartment of the public housing building was entered when someone checked to ensure that everyone had left their units during a routine fire drill back in March. The door was unlocked and the little boy was asked where his mother was. That is when the body of the decomposing 35-year-old mother was discovered. The sound that Ms. Chabot heard of someone slamming a door shut ten days earlier was the exiting of the woman's murderer.

The maintenance man who discovered the woman's body emerged in no time from the apartment. "The guy came running out, and he was freaking. He seemed to be in shock", said Ms. Chabot, describing his frantic calls leading to Paramedics arriving with little time wasted. The little boy was taken away from the apartment into the hallway, where neighbours began running into their apartments. "One woman ran down the hallway to get a diaper. Paramedics asked me if I had any crackers", she said.

The child, dressed in pajamas seemed preternaturally calm. He had known how to go to the refrigerator to access food and drink, at two years of age. "It was surreal. He wasn't upset or anything", the neighbour observed of the child. Peering into the open door of the apartment, sippy cups could be seen sitting on the coffee table in the living room. Isn't it typical that friends of the mother described her as a "good person, good mother". A small child who learned quickly that if he wanted to eat or drink he had to serve himself.

A mother murdered in her child's presence by a drug dealer, a 31-year-old with the name of Mohamad S. Barkhadle who had a lengthy presence on a police offender list, so much so that the Crown had applied to have him designated as a long-term offender. At his last release from prison the judge who set him free stated: "Hopefully this has been a wake-up call to Mr. Barkhadle, as he will be closely monitored in future". Not all that closely, obviously.

This, of a man who went on to commit attempted murder, aggravated sexual assault, forcible confinement, overcoming resistance by choking, uttering threats, breach of probation and failure to report as required. These are crimes, some of which occurred after the capital crime he committed for which police charged the man with the murder of the child's mother. Earlier, in 2012, an arrest warrant was issued by police viewing him as a suspect who during a robbery had choked a woman.

Two years before he was arrested, he was charged with pimping a 17-year old girl and charged with procuring and living off the avails of prostitution, off the avails of a juvenile prostitute using violence. He was found guilty of possession of a dangerous weapon, of criminal harassment, sentenced to seven months in jail for "morally reprehensible" crimes, in the words of the sentencing judge.

This is not an isolated event of Muslim immigrants and their offspring specializing in gang activity, drug trafficking, shootings, stabbings, and crimes of every other description. Earlier in this week there were three shootings resulting in two deaths, all committed by one man, Alam Buoc, a Sudanese, who shot to death Abdulrahman Al-Shammari, 26, and his cousin Dirie Olol, 27, wounding 27-year-old Talal Al-Shammari in three separate locations.

The Ottawa Muslim community has contributed exponentially greater numbers of crime offenders locally than any other community within the area, vastly disproportionate to their population demographic numbers. When crimes are committed of any kind, it has become common to note that the names identify them as Muslims, from various countries around the world, resident in Canada to enrich the culture and prevailing social order by their presence.

An Ottawa police constable will be standing trial, charged with involvement in the death of a middle-aged man from Somalia who was known in his close community as being intellectually challenged. The man had molested women at a store located close to the apartment where he lived with his parents. When police responded to a 911 call, Abdirahman Abdi ran from the scene, and when police caught up to him outside the apartment building where he lived, he resisted arrest. The result of attempting to subdue the man led to his death.

Demonstrators march from Somerset Square Park to Ottawa police headquarters on Elgin Street during the March for Justice – In Memory of Abdirahman Abdi. Saturday, July 30, 2016. James Park / Postmedia