John Goddard: Mississauga ISIS supporters tried to slaughter entire family who knew too much - National Post
Cover of John Goddard's Chicken Land. Front cover, Chicken Land: Murder in the Name of Allah, design by Robin Locke Monda, court sketch by Pam Davies. Used with permission of author. Article contentA man entered a family’s takeout restaurant and started shooting. He killed one son on the spot, execution-style, and inflicted other terrible injuries — a second son was shot through the neck, the father in the chest. The attempted mass-murder of a family at their workplace marked a first for Canada, and police arrested three men — shooter, getaway driver and ringleader. But what was their motive? All three were sending money to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Pakistan, prosecutors alleged, and all three planned terrorist attacks in Canada. When someone at the chicken restaurant discovered their secret, the three tried to slaughter everyone working there. In his new book, Chicken Land: Murder in the Name of Allah, Toronto author John Goddard tells the full story of the atrocity that took place five years ago in Mississauga.
He had reddish-brown hair, unusual for a Pakistani, and freckles around his eyes and nose. In other ways, he conformed to one of the stereotypical profiles of the South Asian Muslim male. He was bearded, with a thin, almost non-existent moustache and a squarish, heavy-looking face. His body, even in his twenties, was taking on the pudgy shapelessness that would become characteristic as he grew older. He projected not exactly charisma but enough confidence and charm to hold sway over others, especially those younger and less emotionally mature than himself.
Columnist Jesse Kline keeps you up to date with what’s happening in Israel and the effects of antisemitism on life here in Canada. Friday mornings.
A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Channel Israel will soon be in your inbox.
We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again
Naqash Abbasi was his name. He grew up in a reasonably affluent household. Both his parents held good jobs. Within a few years of arriving in Canada, they bought a four-bedroom home in Mississauga, a sprawling conglomeration of villages, towns and suburban developments adjoining the western limits of Toronto, the country’s largest city. After high school, he enrolled in college to study Customs and International Transportation but didn’t finish. He was more a doer than a thinker. For two years, he worked on the assembly line at the local Chrysler automotive plant and afterward took a job as a truck dispatcher.
In early 2012, when Abbasi was 22 years old, he started down his wayward path. He visited a friend at a juvenile detention centre, a boy he had known since childhood and regarded as a younger brother. The boy was also Muslim from Pakistan. He had been dating a girl in his high school class and when she broke it off, he reacted badly. He phoned and texted her obsessively for months, and the more she insisted they were finished, the more aggressive he became. One day, he tried to break into her family’s home and another time he actually did break in. The girl opened her bedroom closet and found him standing inside. Finally, when he threatened to kill her new boyfriend, she called police.
