Wednesday March 1, 2017
BY ANDY RIGA
Police supervise the evacuation of Concordia University’s EV Building on in Montreal following a bomb threat targeting Muslim students Wednesday March 1, 2017. JOHN MAHONEY / MONTREAL GAZETTE
Montreal police are investigating after a letter was sent to media outlets Wednesday morning threatening to set off bombs targeting Muslim students in two Concordia University buildings.
The threats led Concordia to evacuate three buildings at 11:30 a.m., sending thousands of students, faculty and other staff into downtown Montreal streets.
Just after 2 p.m., police said they had completed their searches of the Hall, and EV buildings (a third building, GM, was evacuated because it is connected to one of the targeted buildings). Police said nothing was found during the searches.
Concordia said it will reopen the buildings at 6 p.m. “As a precautionary measure, we will be increasing security measures across both campuses,” the university said in a 3:27 p.m. update on its website.
The threats came a month after a gunman attacked a Quebec City mosque, killing six Muslim men as they prayed. A Quebec-born student, Alexandre Bissonnette, who friends say was anti-immigrant, anti-feminist and feared the marginalization of the white race, has been charged.
“I’m shocked and surprised,” Concordia President Alan Shepard told reporters after a meeting with Quebec Higher Education Minister Hélène David early Wednesday afternoon.
“We’re an open university,” Shepard said. “We have students from 150 different countries and many faith communities and everybody’s welcome. And it’s a shame to see this kind of threat against any of our groups and students. We take it very seriously.”
David described the threats as “unacceptable and criminal. “Quebec is an inclusive place and a place where people live together and we won’t tolerate this kind of threat,” she said.
Montreal police spokesperson Benoit Boisselle said no suspicious objects or explosives were found.
The threats suggested bombs would be detonated over a 50-hour period between Wednesday and Friday.
Boisselle said Concordia has increased surveillance by its own security officers and Montreal police have stepped up patrols around the campus.
The investigation has been handed to the major crime division. It’s too early to discuss possible suspects and what information police have about the person or group that sent the threat, Boisselle said.
McGill received a similar letter Wednesday but it did not contain threats involving particular times or buildings, he said.
Boisselle said McGill decided not to evacuate. Montreal police have increased patrols around McGill, as well.
The preventive evacuation of the Hall and EV buildings was ordered at 11:30 a.m., about two hours after the threat was received. The STM’s Green Line service to Guy-Concordia was also interrupted for a short period of time. The GM building was eventually evacuated due to its proximity to other buildings.
The letter, which was sent to the Montreal Gazette as well as several other media outlets, suggests bombs will be set off at two buildings this week – the Hall building on de Maisonneuve Blvd. and the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts building on Ste-Catherine St.
The letter was received by several media outlets.
It said it was a warning to Muslim students. It complained about Friday prayers, men washing their feet in sinks and men walking in bare feet or flip-flops on the seventh floor of the Hall building. It went on to say that bombs would be detonated every day from March 1 to March 3 unless Concordia bans what the letter referred to as “Moslem (sic) activities.”
The letter says that a member of the group calling itself the Council of Conservative Citizens of Canada reported her concern about “Friday prayers and the often anti-Christian and anti-Jewish speeches” to the Concordia Student Union (CSU), which “didn’t do anything” about it.
The CSU’s general coordinator, Lucinda Marshall-Kiparissis, said Wednesday that the CSU learned that what the letter was referencing was a recent complaint made to one of its receptionists.
“We are currently trying to get more information,” Marshall-Kiparissis said. “But the CSU will never compromise on the existence of prayer spaces for our Muslim students, and if the complaint was Islamophobic in nature our receptionists are not obliged to entertain it.”
McGill University campus radio station CKUT also received the letter Wednesday morning. In an email CKUT received, the group said it will “spread our fight to McGill, too.”
McGill spokesperson Carole Graveline said the university is aware of the situation and campus security has been warned about the email CKUT received.
Standing in a throng of students outside one of the evacuated buildings, Concordia spokesperson Chris Mota said the university was taking the threat seriously but had no evidence it was real.
She said police asked for the evacuation so they could go through the building and assess the threat. Thousands of students, faculty and other staff poured out of the building in an orderly fashion.
Between Monday and Thursday, one of the buildings is hosting an Islamic Awareness Week.
Classes and activities have been cancelled in the three evacuated buildings until 6 p.m. Wednesday.
The letter complains about Muslim students at Concordia. “Now that President Trump is in office south of the border, things have changed,” the letter says.
Concordia spokersperson Chris Mota said the university also received the letter.
She said she knows of no other threats made against Muslim students at Concordia.