Attack on London Muslim family could be terror: documents
Accused in four deaths lurked on dark web
• A national security officer who reviewed the interview of the man accused of deliberately running down a Muslim family in London concluded the act was likely “planned and deliberate” and could be considered “terrorism offences,” according to just-released search warrant documents.
The documents also suggest that Nathan Veltman was involved in the shadowy world of the internet's dark web before the June 6, 2021, crash that killed four family members and injured a fifth.
The dark web is accessible only through special browsers that allow users to anonymously share information such as support of terrorism.
Nathaniel Veltman, 20 at the time, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder in the June 6, 2021, collision police allege targeted the family because of their Muslim faith as they went for an evening walk.
Three generations of the Afzaal family were killed. In the fallout came calls by Muslim leaders and others for governments in Canada to do more to address violent Islamophobia.
London police obtained warrants in June to search a black Dodge Ram pickup truck believed to be Veltman's, his London apartment and electronic devices. The sealed warrants were challenged by four media organizations, including The London Free Press and its publisher, Postmedia Network, which won partial access to the documents in an Ontario Superior Court ruling last week.
Most of the material remains under a publication ban that won't be lifted until the conclusion of court proceedings against Veltman.
The documents suggest police suspected Veltman drove to a London intersection on the evening of June 6, 2021, with knives and a machete in a pickup truck that had a push bar attached to the front.
Afterward, wearing a helmet, he knelt in a parking lot beside his still-running truck even before police arrived, the documents say.
The documents describe the horrific scene after the Afzaal family — Salman (Syed) Afzaal, 46, his mother Talat Afzaal, 74, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, their daughter Yumnah, 15, and son Fayez, 9, the only survivor — were struck, and how witnesses frantically tried to help them.
Prosecutors are pursuing terrorism as an additional basis for the first-degree murder charges. A member of the RCMP and Canada's National Security Enforcement Team (INSET), Fady Yacoub, filed an affidavit in support of police efforts to search for terrorism evidence.
After reviewing a verbatim transcript of Veltman's statement to police, statements from officers and witnesses, video of the incident and analytical reports, there is “reasonable grounds to believe ... the offences were planned and deliberate,” Yacoub writes in the affidavit.
“I believe that there are reasonable grounds to believe the charges ... also constitute terrorism offences” under the Criminal Code of Canada, Yacoub added.
London police obtained a warrant on June 12 to search the pickup and Veltman's apartment. Police later obtained a second warrant allowing followup searches, largely electronic devices, seized in the first search.
Police must file a document called an Information to Obtain, or ITO, to obtain a search warrant — basically, outlining what investigators might find in a search.
The ITOS in the two search warrants outline the horror of June 6 in London.
The initial 911 calls came in at 8:40 p.m., with reports of “several unconscious people badly injured and laying in the roadway.”
The first police officer at the scene described seeing “pedestrians everywhere calling for help.”
“There were also bodies on and visible from the roadway causing many people to stop and assist and contact 911,” was how one officer described it.
One officer recognized a bystander as an off-duty firefighter who was yelling for help. The officer ran to him and assisted giving CPR to a man, who had no vital signs.
Police sought the right to search several devices seized from the truck and apartment, including a laptop, two cellphones, two USB drives, and an external hard drive.
Police were looking for communications, internet searches, evidence of the dark web, documents, texts, pictures, videos and passwords on the devices.
The search warrant documents also reveal that police believe Veltman searched the dark web. London police Det. Const. Stephen Robertson said in his warrant applications that he relied on London police detective Jason Eddy, a digital forensic specialist, for information.
Eddy used software to boot Veltman's laptop that shows the computer running just as Veltman would see it, but without accessing the internet, Robertson wrote in his application.
“Detective Eddy noted that the TOR browser was installed on the laptop and the shortcuts to launch the TOR browser was on the desktop.”
TOR stands for The Onion Router and is used to access the dark web, a series of encrypted websites on the internet, Eddy told Robertson.
“The most prevalent types of dark web content is child pornography, illicit markets for drugs, weapons and other illegal items, hacking, fraud, and terrorism and extremist websites,” Robertson wrote.
Police found 68 accounts on Veltman's laptop, and sought to access more than a dozen, including Google and Microsoft accounts that used different versions of his full name or pseudonyms.