TROUBLED PATH TO CANADA
One year after the downtown Edmonton truck attack, reporter Jonny Wakefield speaks to the man charged in the rampage and the woman who knows him best
“You can ask (her) anything about me, and she will tell you.”
Those handful of words are the first Abdulahi Hasan Sharif has spoken to media since Sept. 30, 2017 — the day a city police constable was run down and stabbed outside an Edmonton Eskimos game and four pedestrians were later struck by a swerving U-Haul truck pursued by police. When a TV cameraman’s lens caught the image of an Islamic State-group flag inside the car that night, the events became international news.
Sharif, 31, is charged with five counts of attempted murder in addition to charges for fleeing police and possessing a knife. While police initially said they were investigating the events as “acts of terrorism,” no terrorism charges have been laid.
Sharif’s Sept. 19 call from the Calgary Remand Centre to a Postmedia reporter was short — about two minutes — and focused on confirming his relationship with a woman who has been his romantic partner since 2016.
Since the attack, only snippets of information about Sharif have come to light, through police, the courts and a small number friends, former coworkers and advocates.
Sharif’s 31-year-old partner, who met him in early 2016 and lived with him for about one year, granted two interviews to Postmedia this month on the condition her name not be used because she is concerned for her safety.
Through her, a clearer picture of Sharif has emerged, one that includes trauma from his early life in Somalia and how he eventually ended up living in Canada. Sharif described to her two cases when he was held captive by the East African Islamist group al- Shabab. She said he has a history of violent outbursts which he has difficultly controlling, though she added he never intentionally hurt her. And as a preteen, he was hospitalized and medicated for a mental disorder.
Doctors who assessed Sharif at Alberta Hospital in Edmonton following his arrest found him fit to stand trial.
Samantha Labahn, Sharif ’s lawyer, advised the woman against speaking about some details of the case — specifically the flag and a previous RCMP investigation into alleged “extremist” views earlier espoused by Sharif.
In the weeks and months leading up to Sept. 30, Sharif ’s partner said he was increasingly unwell. Some nights, he would wake up screaming. Somebody was after him, trying to kill him.
Other nights, while lying awake in bed, he would convince himself there was a snake in the room. He would see things, hear things that weren’t there.
“Sometimes he would tell me, ‘Tonight I’m not going to sleep in the bedroom, give me a mattress, I want to sleep in the living room,’” said Sharif ’s partner.
“When I ask him why, what’s going on? He would be like, ‘So I can jump from the balcony if something happens.’”
She told him he would seriously hurt himself if he jumped; the apartment where they lived was on the third floor.
“‘I will break my bones, but (at least) I won’t be dead.’”
TERROR ON EDMONTON STREETS
Sept. 30, 2017, was a crisp autumn evening in Edmonton. Around 30,000 people made their way to Commonwealth Stadium just north of downtown for the Saturday night matchup pitting the Edmonton Eskimos against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Down the road from the stadium, near 107A Avenue and 92 Street, Edmonton police Const. Mike Chernyk manned a game-day traffic blockade.
Then, around 8:15 p.m. as the game was underway, a white Chevrolet Malibu careened through barricades, slamming into Chernyk who was sent flying through the air, tumbling to the pavement about five metres away. Within 20 seconds, as a handful of onlookers ran over to help the injured officer, the driver of the car scrambled out from behind the wheel and attacked Chernyk with a knife as bystanders fled. The two men wrestled on the ground in a 30-second life-and-death struggle before the man fled north on 92 Street, with Chernyk bolting up.
Police immediately launched a manhunt. Hours after the attack on Chernyk, police at a CheckStop near Wayne Gretzky Drive and 112 Avenue pulled over a man driving a rented U-Haul truck. When an officer recognized the name on his driver’s licence, the man sped away in the truck, trailed by at least a dozen police vehicles.
The chase roared into downtown Edmonton, where police said the swerving U-Haul deliberately hit four pedestrians — Kim O’Hara, Jordan Stewardson, Paul Biegel and Jack Zubick — in its race along Jasper Avenue. Within minutes, police rammed the speeding truck with a cruiser, flipping it onto its side near 100 Avenue and 106 Street. Officers smashed the front window, deployed a Taser, detonated a stun grenade and pulled the driver through the shattered windshield.
Amazingly, no one was killed. No one fired a shot.
SHARIF’S START
According to Sharif’s charge document, he was born Jan. 1, 1987. His partner, who is herself from Somalia, said he was born in Mogadishu. She said Sharif himself is unsure of his exact birthday. He speaks some English, but relies on a Somali language interpreter in court.
Somalia’s civil war began in 1991 with the overthrow of the country ’s longtime dictator. It was soon deemed a failed state. What Sharif told his partner of his early life was grim, and her understanding of his timeline is by her own admission incomplete.
She said Sharif is one of six siblings — four brothers and two sisters — who are now split between Kenya and Somalia. Sharif ’s mother is now in Nairobi, Kenya, while his father is still in Mogadishu.
Sharif had learning difficulties in school, and would often escape to the movie theatre instead of going to class. His family would “punish him all the time,” she said, sometimes with beatings.
Sharif began to show signs of mental illness as a youth, his partner said. He was treated between 1998 and 2001, both in hospital and under supervision at home, she said. He later told her he was diagnosed with what he called “manic depression,” in addition to other issues. Sharif’s mother “could just tell me that he was in hospital, he used to take medication,” the partner said.
Sharif’s mental state was the focus of months of legal proceedings. His former lawyer, Karanpal Aujla, said he had “significant” concerns about his client’s mental health. He requested doctors assess Sharif ’s fitness to stand trial as well as whether he could be found “not criminally responsible” for his alleged actions on account of a mental disorder.
Doctors at Alberta Hospital eventually determined Sharif is fit to stand trial, and that he does not meet the threshold to be deemed not criminally responsible.
In March, Aujla told reporters he was “definitely surprised” with the outcome of the latter assessment.
“In my opinion, it found substantial mental health issues; however, the test required for (not criminally responsible) is quite, quite high,” he said. Labahn said she plans to seek a second opinion.
Postmedia earlier this month requested access to the courtordered assessments of Sharif’s mental health, but as is typical with such records, they are sealed by order of a provincial court judge.
FLIGHT FROM AL-SHABAB
When Sharif was a teenager, his partner said he was twice taken hostage by al-Shabab, a jihadist group that emerged in 2006.
He described being held with a friend by militants at a facility north of Mogadishu for about 50 days in either 2005 or 2006 — beaten, locked up and forced to labour under threat of death.
He escaped when a militant stopped to get gas while driving him and a fellow prisoner. The two ran off, their hands bound, under a hail of gunfire. Sharif told her he was eventually rescued by the Ethiopian army — who at first shot at him believing he was carrying explosives. The army held him for about two weeks before releasing him.
Al-Shabab later killed some of Sharif ’s friends and an uncle, which prompted him to flee the country. Sharif would tell his partner how much he hates the group. She would sometimes joke with him about how they would kill him if they knew things he did in Edmonton — like giving blood or living with non-Muslim friends.
“And he would be like, ‘Thanks God I’m not in Somalia,’” she said.
Sharif left the country around 2008. He travelled to Kenya, then Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia and Angola. He had some money from family, who wanted to help him get to a safe country.
He eventually met a group that was travelling to Brazil, his partner said.
Mahamad Accord, a Somali human rights advocate who was one of the first people to speak to Sharif after his arrest, said in an interview earlier this year that they talked about Sharif’s path to Canada during a visit at the Edmonton Remand Centre.
Accord was able to speak to Sharif through a video link at the Elizabeth Fry Society, which provides services to people in the court system. He ended contact after Sharif was assigned a lawyer. They did not talk about specifics of the case because their conversations would not have been privileged.
Brazil is a common starting point for African refugees in the Americas, said Accord, because it’s easier to get visas there.
Sharif’s partner said that he stayed in Brazil long enough to find work with a company that slaughters chickens. At some point, he made his way to Mexico. She did not know the exact details of how he got there, but he said he used traffickers to help him move from country to country.
On July 12, 2011, Sharif arrived on foot at the San Ysidro port of entry — a sprawling border crossing between Tijuana, Mexico, and California. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, he had no documents and no legal status to enter the United States, so he was taken into custody and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) three days later. According to ICE, he had no known criminal history.
In my opinion, it found substantial mental health issues; however, the test required for (not criminally responsible) is quite, quite high.