Coalition wants plan to stop white supremacy after mosque killing

As community members are “still reeling” from the slaying of Mohamed-Aslim Zafis outside a Rexdale mosque last month, more than two dozen human rights groups are calling for a national action plan to dismantle white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

“This attack did not happen in isolation,” reads an open letter released Monday by the National Council of Canadian Muslims, addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“This is attack is one in a long series of a chain of horrifying attacks on racialized communities in Canada.”

The letter is co-signed by 25 human rights and civil liberties groups, including Amnesty International, the World Sikh Organization, the Canadian Labour Congress and Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Zafis, a 58-year-old father and volunteer caretaker, was fatally stabbed outside Etobicoke’s International Muslim Organization mosque on Sept. 12. He was killed as he sat outside the doors, controlling entry to abide by COVID-19 health regulations.

Guilherme “William” Von Neutegem, 34, was later arrested by Toronto police homicide investigators and charged with first-degree murder.

Hours after his arrest, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), an organization that monitors and reports on hate groups, says it linked the accused’s social media activity to neo-Nazi ideology. According to CAHN — which is also a signatory to the letter — the posts on multiple accounts with the same name and location as Von Neutegem demonstrate links to a neo-Nazi occult ideology that instructs believers to commit murders.

Von Neutegem’s arrest and reported ties to white supremacist accounts spurred messages of support from politicians including Trudeau, and has now prompted calls for a federal plan to stop neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.

“Faith-based communities, as well as racialized communities, have faced attacks on our homes, our places of worship, our children and our congregants at the hands of white supremacist organizations,” the coalition writes in the letter.

Reported by CAHN and confirmed by the Star, social media accounts linked to a man with the same name and location as Von Neutegem contain white supremacist and neo-Nazi content and rhetoric, including a chant on YouTube that the CAHN describes as a neo-Nazi death ideology and a Twitter account that follows a white supremacist media platform.