Accused in hammer attack also blamed in bomb scare
Suspicious package left at police station
Saad Akhtar, the Toronto man who allegedly beat a woman to death with a hammer in a terrorist attack last week, sparked a bomb scare and evacuation at the police station as he surrendered, Toronto police confirm.
Akhtar placed a suspicious package at the front desk of Toronto Police Service’s 42 Division station when turning himself in after the Feb. 21 hammer attack, police said. A specially trained Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive (CBRNE) team “rendered (the package) safe,” a police spokesman confirmed to the National Post.
Akhtar, 30, faces an unprecedented charge of “first-degree murder — including terrorist activity.”
There had been unconfirmed reports of a fake explosive soon after the charges against him were updated. Rumours among police spoke of canisters being placed on the counter and officers tackling him.
Toronto police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray would not confirm the granular details of the incident but confirmed a bomb scare incident.
Hang-kam Chiu, known as Annie, was killed in a hammer attack as she walked along Sheppard Avenue East near Markham Road at around 7 p.m.
Shortly before 10 p.m. that night, officers at 42 Division “became aware of a suspicious package at the front desk, allegedly left there by
Saad Akhtar when he turned himself in,” Gray said.
“Some members were evacuated and the CBRNE team was called to investigate. The package was rendered safe and members were allowed to return to normal operations,” she said.
“This incident is part of our ongoing investigation.”
She would not comment on the nature of the package. It is not known if the package was inert all along, or whether a real explosive or dangerous substance inside it was deactivated in some way by the CBRNE team.
The suspicious package incident happened at the same time as Akhtar’s surrender, she said, which is curious timing.
The police station is only 750 metres from where Chiu was attacked. It is not known what happened in the nearly three hours between the attack and Akhtar’s surrender.
The confirmed role of a possible or fake explosive device is consistent with how other recent terrorist attacks have played out in the West.
On Nov. 29, 2019, five people were stabbed, two fatally, in London, England, by Usman Khan, who had been released from prison after serving time for terrorism offences. He wore a fake suicide vest and was shot dead by police on London Bridge after being tackled by members of the public.
Also in London, on Feb. 2 of this year, Sudesh Amman — who had similarly been released from prison after a terrorism conviction — stabbed two people. He also wore what was described as a “hoax bomb” and was shot dead by police.
The attacks reflect what the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) warned is the current face of terrorism.
“Recent terrorism activities in the West have been typically characterized by low-resource, high-impact acts, and usually inspired by terrorist groups such as alqaida or extremists responding to Daesh’s call for a ‘virtual caliphate’,” CSIS said in its June annual report.
Daesh is another name for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. ISIL and alqaida terrorist groups have both issued calls for supporters to use weapons readily at hand in attacks on the West.