Canadian court sentences ‘incel’ attacker as terrorist

OTTAWA - A Canadian man who murdered a Toronto massage parlour worker and injured another with a sword, in the country’s first case of terrorism linked to the misogynist “incel” movement, was given a life sentence on Nov 28.

The individual, who was not identified because he was only 17 years old at the time of the attack in February 2020, had already pleaded guilty.

Now 21, he was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole until he has served 10 years in prison – the maximum for juvenile offenders – plus three years to be served concurrently for attempted murder.

A judge in June had ruled that the attack amounted to terrorism because the teen had been inspired by the “incel” movement, an online group of women-hating men who describe themselves as “involuntarily celibate”.

Members of the loose collective have targeted those whom they see as attractive or sexually active women and men with violence and online vitriol.

But this case marked the first time in Canada – and possibly the world – that the authorities recognised gender-based violence as terrorism, which would lengthen the sentence of a convicted offender.

At the sentencing hearing on Nov 28, Justice Suhail Akhtar denounced the killer’s “savagery motivated by misogyny” in rejecting defense arguments for a lighter youth sentence.

Justice Akhtar was quoted by local media as saying the victim – stabbed 42 times – had been “butchered”.

The court heard that the teen had sought out women to attack with a sword. He stabbed to death the massage parlour receptionist, before being disarmed by another woman who was also wounded.

The police said they found a handwritten note in his pocket calling for an “incel” rebellion, and during his arrest he told them: “I wanted to kill everybody in the building and I’m happy I got one.”

The “incel” group

previously made headlines in Canada in 2018

when a man claiming to have been part of the movement drove a rented van onto a busy Toronto sidewalk, killing 11 – mostly women – and injuring 16 others.

The attacker, Alek Minassian, was sentenced in 2022 to life in prison for those murders, but was never charged with terrorism. AFP