Masked man with firebomb attacks Montreal Jewish school
Last Updated Sun, 03 Sep 2006 12:04:13 EDT
CBC News
Surveillance video recovered by Montreal police shows a masked man throwing a firebomb at the door of an orthodox Jewish school in an attack early Saturday.
The attack damaged the front entrance of the Taldos Yakov Yosef school in Montreal’s Outremont neighbourhood. (CBC) The bomb started a fire but the damage was described as minimal.
Police said a neighbour heard what sounded like a window breaking just after midnight and looked out to see the main entrance of the Taldos Yakov Yosef school in Outremont in flames.
In the video, the man takes a few steps toward the entrance, then steps back to throw a lighted Molotov cocktail. He removes his mask as he steps out of the video frame, but his face is not visible.
Although officials of Jewish groups disagree, police have been unwilling to declare the attack a hate crime. In the absence of graffiti or other other evidence, it is being treated as an unexplained case of arson.
Even so, it has stirred memories of a firebomb attack that destroyed the library of Montreal’s United Talmud Torah school in 2004.
The library of the United Talmud Torah school in Montreal was destroyed by another firebomb attack, in 2004. (Canadian Press) A note left at the school said the fire was in retaliation for the Israeli army’s killing of a leader of the Hamas militant group.
The following year, a 19-year-old man who worked part-time at Canadian Tire was sentenced to two years in prison for the attack.
Police tracked the man down through evidence left at the scene, including long wooden matches, kerosene and four plastic fuel containers made exclusively for Canadian Tire.
It is so amazing to me that the authorities aren’t calling this a hate crime. If this were a mosque, the authorities would be bending over backwards to prove they aren’t Islamophobic.