"I Didn't Think for a Second He Was Joking"

"Before I go, I want you to remember my name and remember my face, because the next time you see it, I'll be on the news." 

"I know when I'm going to die because I'm going to plant a bomb in every synagogue in Toronto and blow them up to kill as many Jews as possible."

Waisuddin Akbari, 41 

 

"It is important to be clear about what Mr. Akbari is -- and is not -- being sentenced for. He is not being sentenced for taking any material steps to act on the threats he made. There is no evidence before me of the collection of weapons, explosives, maps, planning or coordination."

"Indeed, following his arrest, police conducted extensive checks and searches on Mr. Akbari to ensure the safety of the community was not still at risk. Mr. Akbari's guilt is based on empty threats he communicated to a stranger, mistakenly assuming [he] would be sympathetic to Akbar's own warped and hateful world view. There was no effort to publicize his threats beyond the conversation."

"That is not to say that the threats were harmless. Mr. Akbari's threats were clearly motivated by bias, prejudice and hate toward Israelis and Jews. ... Hate-based threats are not just words, they are the gasoline upon which even more serious offences burn. Where hate is normalized, harm follows."

"It is impossible to overstate the sense of fear, anger, and frustration Mr. Akbari's words have instilled in the broader Jewish community."

Justice Edward Prutschi, Ontario Court of Justice, Newmarket 

The Newmarket courthouse is shown in a file photo. File photo/Village Media

 

"At a time of rampant antisemitism in Canada and elsewhere, it sends an alarming message that threats to slaughter Jews and bomb synagogues may be met with leniency."

"That is extremely disappointing and profoundly unsettling for our community."

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, director, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies 

Justice Prutschi, while recognizing that physical harm follows voiced threats against Jews, and while commiserating with the 'sense of fear, anger and frustration' that Jews in Canada experience when threats of the nature spouted by this man take place, yet found it reasonable to dismiss the event to the extent of sentencing the malefactor to house arrest. The judge was well aware of the invasive and viral threats emanating from groups of Palestinian-Hamas supporters across Canada, condemning Israel for its purported 'genocide' in Gaza, and threatening to 'globalize the intifada' while chanting 'final solution'.

 

Yet he felt a reasonable response to this man's sinister threats "to kill as many Jews as possible", merited no more than a veritable gentle chiding of a 60-day period of restraining the man to his home and three years of probation. This is viewed by Justice Prutschi as appropriate penalty for advocating for actual genocide. A decision that entirely lacks acknowledgement of the nature of the offence, much less the potential of the man following through on his sinister threat. In contrast to the manner in which 'justice' was seen to be done in that Newmarket courtroom, a similar case in the U.S. was handled quite differently.

 

On July 23, the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York issued this notice: 

"Earlier today in federal court in Brooklyn, Domagoj Patkovic was sentenced by United States District Judge Ramon E. Reyes, Jr. to 60 months’ imprisonment for conspiring to make threats and conveying false information about explosives.  The defendant made hoax bomb threat phone calls to historically Jewish hospitals and care centers in New York City and on Long Island. "

"Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and Christopher G. Raia, Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the sentencing."

“The defendant endangered patients and diverted precious law enforcement resources to advance his hateful agenda against people of the Jewish faith.  His actions fed a rising tide of antisemitism in America,” stated United States Attorney Nocella.  “Our Office will continue to prosecute dangerous bomb threats and swatting schemes to the fullest extent of the law, especially those motivated by hate, and those targeting vulnerable communities in hospitals and care centers.”

 

The defendant in the U.S. case made threats similar to those expressed by the defendant in Canada. In the case in New York, the legal authorities felt it appropriate to ensure that consequence under the law recognizing the seriousness of the man's actions and to deter others from performing similar actions, be given a sentence commensurate with the crime: 60 months' incarceration. In the Canadian case, the justice who handed down the sentence felt that a similar crime merited a 60-day home detention. As Jaime Kirzner-Roberts with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center pointed out, the 'light sentence' indicates an urgent need to reform Canada's hate crime laws.

 

After hearing community impact statements from five Jewish community groups outlining the depth of fear and despair experienced by Jews with the spread of the news of the threats, and Justice Prutschi's own expressed empathy for the plight of Jews facing an ongoing flood of  unrestrained antisemitism combined with threats, that easy-going sentence of home detention was still considered fitting as a consequence of an unbridled hate crime and threat of death to the Jewish community.

 

Born in Afghanistan, taken to Pakistan at age six before moving to Moscow, Russia eight years later, Akbari moved to Canada in 2007. He became a Canadian citizen, opened a shawarma restaurant, married and had children. At the trial he denied any statements of bombing synagogues or killing Jews. The judge noted at trial the "false, despicable and odious" commentary expressed by Akbari, who also said he had no idea of what Judaism meant or what a synagogue was before he was arrested.

 

In March of 2024, Akbar was at a BMW dealership, waiting for an oil change. In speaking with a salesman there, he commented he would not lease or finance a new car since it was his belief that Israel and Jews controlled world events and took benefit from interest payments on all car loans He believed, he said to the BMW dealership salesman, that Israel was plotting to exterminate anyone who was not Jewish, and they all deserve deadly punishment which he was prepared to administer. 

 

The salesman in disbelief, challenged Akbari's statements asking if he was serious, leading Akbari to respond: "Yes, I'm serious. I'll make sure those attacks are filmed and posted online so the world can see what I've done."As it happened Akbari and the car salesman are both Muslims, both having grown up in Pakistan; their shared background left Akbari with the impression that what he said would be approved by the other. The salesman, however, described his impression as fearful, leading him to call police and report the conversation.

 

Waissudin Akbari

 

Subsequently, a police investigation led to Akbari being charged with threatening to damage property, and threatening death. "Based on the seriousness in his tone, I didn't think for a second he was joking", the salesman testified in court at Akbari's trial, the result of which was that Akbari was found guilty, and Monday he was finally sentenced. 

 

Crown prosecutors for their part had suggested a four-to-six-month jail sentence to be followed by three years of probation, DNA registration, and a weapons prohibition. Akbari's lawyer on the other hand, felt a conditional discharge, a finding of guilt without jail time or criminal conviction would be more appropriate. In the end, it seems that the judge favoured the lawyer's version of justice. 

 

In apparent sympathy with the defendant Judge Prutschi described Akbari's difficult life prior to his arrival in Canada, his restaurant work supporting wife and two teenage children, and an Ismaili Muslim community network expressing support for his rehabilitation while not condoning the threats. His shawarma franchise was cancelled. He went on denying he had issued any threats, expressing opposition to violence and antisemitism. 

 

At Toronto's Adath Israel Synagogue. Photo by Peter J. Thompson /National Post

 

"The result of the unprecedented rise in antisemitism has left a palpable dread hanging over the community. This atmosphere of despair is only amplified by the actions of Mr. Akbart."

"Jewish Canadians did not and do not feel safe in their own communities. The constant threat of attack has left members of the community in perpetual fear for their well being and has led to members of the community questioning their future as Canadians." 

Richard Robertson, director, B'nai Brith Canada 

The Exquisite Letter of the Law : Evading Justice

The Einsatzgruppen (task forces, special action groups) were units of the Security Police and SD (the SS intelligence service) that followed the German army as it invaded and occupied countries in Europe. Often referred to as “mobile killing squads,” they are best known for their role in the systematic murder of Jews in mass shooting operations on Soviet territory.  USHMM

"Mr. Oberlander was a member [of] a Nazi killing unit responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews ... he gained access to Canada under false pretences."

"[Tuesday's] ruling is one step closer to justice for thousands Canadian Holocaust survivors and their descendants and one step closer to his rightful deportation from this country."

Martin Sampson, Vice President, Communications, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) 

Helmut Oberlander has said he was forcibly conscripted by the Nazis when he was 17 years old. He has lost his latest appeal and will face a deportation hearing with the Immigration and Refugee Board. (CIJA)

"He cannot read or hear the allegations of fact alleged against him. Given his age, his memory faculties are diminished greatly."

"Such a lengthy process, coupled with aging over the decades, has left Mr. Oberlander extremely vulnerable and unable to defend his own interests in this proceeding. It would be an abuse of process to continue in this case."

"[Even so, his] participatory rights are greatly reduced. If these proceedings are permitted to continue, he requires that accommodations be undertaken to the hearing process to ensure his full and active participation."

"It cannot be said that Mr. Oberlander has abused the judicial process. He has been successful three times in the Court of Appeal in having decisions that were wrong in law quashed."

"The issue of Mr. Oberlander’s status was not before [MacKay]. He was not to decide whether Mr. Oberlander had lost domicile or, for that matter, Canadian citizenship. The only issue for him to decide was whether or not he acquired citizenship by material misrepresentation. His statement regarding domicile was not required and was not indicated in the law as being required."

"Because of the context and issues which he was deciding and the subsequent role of the GIC [Government in Council] in revoking status, the comments made by Justice MacKay regarding Mr. Oberlander’s domicile status must be considered obiter and of no effect on subsequent processes — including the present one before the Immigration Division."

Oberlander Defence Lawyers

Former Nazi Helmut Oberlander, with his wife Margaret, in 2003. Photo by Peter Lee/Waterloo Regional Record via CP

"I am not persuaded that the facts justify the exercise of the Court’s discretion in favour of the stay sought by Mr. Oberlander."

"I instead agree with the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness that, in the current circumstances and at this juncture, the Court should not entertain Mr. Oberlander’s request [permanent stay of proceedings]."

"Mr. Oberlander’s admissibility proceedings should be progressed and brought to a conclusion as quickly as possible."

"Special reasons do not arise merely because a party elects to exercise a legal option and is not successful."

Federal Court Judge Denis Gascon

Helmut Oberlander, 97, of Waterloo is accused of failing to disclose his Nazi past to immigration department officials when he entered Canada

 It has been 35 years since the federal government initiated proceedings against Helmut Oberlander with the intention of deporting him. He applied for a Canadian visa in 1954 fraudulently, deliberately avoiding any mention that  h was, during the years of the Holocaust, a member of a Nazi killing squad in Ukraine and in Russia during the Second World War. He had been recruited as a youth and he has used the fact that he was 17 at the time of his recruitment as an ethnic German living in Ukraine to answer to the call of the Third Reich in its notorious dedication to the violent obliteration of European Jewry.

Under Canadian law, citizenship can be revoked on the basis of failing to reveal past membership in governments or their military arms that have been involved in war crimes. He has been fighting deporation for the past 35 years. Even though his citizenship was revoked three times, each occasion leading to a fresh appeal. Now 97, a retired businesman who had settled in Waterloo Ontario, he plans to live to the end of his natural lifespan in Canada and has instructed his legal team to ensure that his plan to avoid deporation succeeds.

His legal team place their strategy on his age, condition of health, his recruitment at 17, and that he was a mere cipher, and did not himself personally kill anyone. In criminal justice, accessory to murder is itself a crime. Association with a death squad, aiding and enabling the extermination of countless human beings, according to his legal team, should be discounted on the basis of his age. While his actions resulted in infants and children, men and women of all ages being deprived of a natural lifespan, summarily executed, his own lifespan was uninterrupted; the gift of years was his, deprived of his victims.

Shooting of Jewish civilians, including mother holding child, 

by a German mobile killing unit near Ivangorod, Ukraine, 1942

 

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada had scheduled a hearing in Feburary over his eligibility to remain in Canada as a foreign national who committed crimes against humanity and who had deliberately withheld information about his past when he applied for citizenship. The issue screams of blatant ineligibility for entry to Canada, for status as a landed immigrant, for gaining citizenship. A war criminal; inadmissible. Falsification of qualification; inadmissible. Yet for 35 years the Canadian justice system has given this man leave to mount one appeal after another.

Each of those court appeals geared to delaying -- or best case scenario -- putting an end to allowing the Immigration and Refugee Board proceeding with his removal from Canada. Frustrating government legal teams attempting to finalize the situation, costing taxpayers through the ongoing betrayal of the concept of justice, angering the Jewish community which has long known that Canada has harboured a surprising number of Nazi war criminals, Helmut Oberlander among them.

His claims through his lawyers that the government erred in not disclosing Deschenes Commission documents on him (named in a confidential portion of a report issued in 1987 by a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada known as the Deschenes Report), leading to "an egregius breach of natural justice and procedure fairness, amounts to an abuse of process". What could be more grotesque: a Nazi war criminal arguing the justice system aiming to produce justice for the millions of European Jews who were targeted for mass murder, is not fair and is abusive to the interests of the Nazi defendant.

The Oberlander legal team is pressing for a permanent stay of proceedings. To release this man from responsibility for his part in the slaughter of innocent people, guilty only of being Jewish. This is a man who was among the first a war crimes unit targeted on behalf of the federal government. "We urge the Immigration Division (of the IRB) to begin his hearing as soon as possible. For Holocaust survivors in Canada and around the world, justice delayed is justice denied", stated B'nai Brith Canada.

Einsatzgruppen executing Jews in Ukraine, 1942. USHMM Photo Archives.)

 

The man's Canadian citizenship was stripped, and that decision was overturned on three occasions. Until finally in 2019 the Supreme Court of Canada refused Oberlander's appeal of the last revocation of his citizenship. The time and energy and money that has gone into the search for justice in the case of this Nazi war criminal is astounding. His welfare has been well looked after by the institutions of the state. Never have the interests of the victims seen anything approaching the same concern for justice to prevail.

Justice for a man who worked for Einsatzkommando 10a (E10a), a special police task force operating in Soviet-occupied Ukraine, which a Canadian judge described as "mobile killing units" the Nazi SS utilized in the interests of efficiency in mass murder. Following the denial of his last appeal of the stripping of his citizenship, his family issued a formal statement to the effect that he "has been unjustly persecuted", that he had "never been charged with any crime". Time and distance made it impossible to obtain criminal prosecutions, leaving deportation as the only remedy for criminal punishment.

"With the start of Hitler’s “war of annihilation” against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the scale of Einsatzgruppen mass murder operations vastly increased. The main targets were Communist Party and Soviet state officials, Roma, and above all Jews of any age or gender. Under the cover of war and using the pretext of military necessity, the Einsatzgruppen View This Term in the Glossary organized and helped to carry out the shooting of more than half a million people, the vast majority of them Jews, in the first nine months of the war."

"The 3,000 personnel of all four Einsatzgruppen did not conduct these killings alone. Units of the Waffen SS, Order Police, Wehrmacht, allied Romanian forces and local collaborators aided them. The latter helped to identify victims as well as kill them. Many of the killers and victims knew one another as neighbors and colleagues. For example, over two days in September 1941, a small detachment of Einsatzgruppe C along with larger units of Waffen SS, Order Police and Ukrainian auxiliaries shot 33,771 Jews in Babi Yar, a ravine outside Kiev. When occupied territories came under civilian control, stationary offices of the SS and Police replaced the Einsatzgruppen and continued to conduct mass shootings."

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum