Jihadi Lone Wolf Mental Illnesses

"As part of our investigation into the homicide, we came across evidence that led us to believe there may be a terrorism-related offence."
"And that’s what’s brought us to today where the updated charge was laid in court this morning."
Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray

Saad Akhtar has been charged with the terrorism-related murder of a 64-year-old Toronto woman. Family Handout

"[There were two reasons to apply the charge].One, signalling, and calling it what it is, if authorities think it’s terrorism. And two, it gets you from second degree murder to first-degree murder without having to prove that the murder was ‘planned and deliberate’."
"That in turn gets you a longer sentence in terms of the parole ineligibility going from 10 to 25 years, but still life in prison."
Michael Nesbitt, law professor, University of Calgary

64-year-old Hang-Kam “Annie” Chiu, the victim of a deadly hammer attack

In Toronto on Friday evening, 64-year-old Hang-Kam Annie Chiu happened to be strolling along Sheppard Avenue in the north-east end of the city. She was accosted by 30-year-old Saad Akhtar wielding a hammer with malice aforethought, killing the woman who was, according to the murderer's mother, unknown to both him and his family. He had chosen her to die at his hands.

According to the Toronto Police Service, Akhtar voluntarily turned himself in to police who charged him with first-degree murder. And then new information came to light which led to an updated charge, that of first-degree murder including terrorist activity. Upon discovering new evidence the Toronto police had turned to the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team -- an RCMP team specializing in terrorism cases -- for advice, and this presumably was the outcome.

A note was evidently discovered tucked under the slain woman's body, revealing that the murder, albeit random and puzzling in nature, had been committed in the fulfillment of 'terrorist reasons'. In a later interview after the arrest of the obvious Islamist jihadist, his mother revealed that her son had been studying computer programming at Ryerson University, that the woman he killed was a stranger to him, and that her son suffered from a mental illness. Diagnosed with ADHD and obsessive -compulsive disorder.

He was not, she emphasized, capable of a violent act such as he has been charged with. A trial and jury will most certainly reach their own conclusions on the evidence which will exclude a mother's trust in a son she described as troubled but refusing help. His usual Friday evening mosque attendance last week did not see him returning home immediately afterward. Instead, he had decided to fulfill a mission incumbent on the faithful in Islam; personal jihad.

Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

Society hosts an awful lot of people of all ages, backgrounds and cultures diagnosed with ADHD, who somehow learn to lead fairly normal lives. Many people suffer from many types of 'abnormal' mental states to which they learn to adjust their lives; among them people with obsessive personalities, those whose compulsive passions would never lead to violence, much less plotting to murder perfect strangers leaving explanatory notes behind.

A flower memorial where Hang-Kam “Annie” Chiu was murdered

Clearly, though purportedly mentally unstable, he had no wish to become a martyr to claim his reward in Paradise. Under the Canadian Criminal Code, a suspect can face charges of first-degree murder irrespective of whether the killing was 'planned and deliberate' as long as it resulted from an offence considered to represent a terrorist action. A first-degree murder charge merits a longer prison sentence. Parole eligibility is ten years for second-degree murder; 25 years under a first-degree charge if found guilty.

"On behalf of the RCMP, I would like to extend our thoughts and prayers to the victim's family and to the communities that are affected by this horrific event."
Superintendent Christopher deGale, O Division, RCMP 

How strange it is that whenever an Islamist jihadist works themselves into a religious frenzy of hatred against those Islam considers enemies within Western society deserving of death, and executes a personal plan with or without like-minded accomplices, friends and family come forward to attest to the attacker's character, that such a diabolical act of deliberate violence ending the life of some poor innocent does not reflect who the killer really is. That in fact, a mental state is responsible for the crime, and as such appealing for sympathy, not condemnation.