National Post (National Edition)
Pilot loses security status over email threats
‘I slit your throat’
A professional pilot has been stripped of his security clearance at a Montreal airport over threatening emails and comments, including one in which he said he would “slit your throat” and “do something” that would land him a life prison sentence.
Transport Canada revoked Julius Varadi’s security clearance on the grounds he might commit an act that would “unlawfully interfere with civil aviation.” A civil aircraft pilot since the 1980s, Varadi required the clearance to work at Trudeau airport in Montreal.
He had appealed to the Federal Court of Canada but lost in a ruling delivered Wednesday by Justice Denis Gascon.
“I cannot conclude that the decision cancelling Mr. Varadi’s TSC (Transportation Security Clearance) was unreasonable,” the judge wrote.
The revocation was in response to four incidents involving “life-threatening” messages Varadi had sent, among them a 2011 email to the president of aircraft manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, whom he wrote should be “hung, shot by a firing squad or better yet decapitated.”
In October 2013, he wrote on the Air Canada Pilots Association forum that “the next time I see an Air Canada moron who s—ts on me I will most probably explode and will most probably do something that will give me a life in prison sentence … You s—t on me, I slit your throat.”
He had also sent an email to the Sûreté du Québec that began, “Oh by the way, froggie…” and said to “f—- off and die.” Through the Service Canada website he wrote about having “killed a big f—-ing bitch from the government of Canada,” according to the ruling.
No charges were laid but the RCMP brought the incidents to the attention of Transport Canada, which said that while Varadi had said his emails were “sarcastic in nature” and that he got “mad on occasion,” they were “graphic and that they should be taken seriously,” Gascon wrote.