{"id":87543,"date":"2017-02-01T19:15:01","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T00:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=87543"},"modified":"2017-02-01T19:15:01","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T00:15:01","slug":"montreal-man-accused-of-uttering-threats-and-inciting-hatred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/02\/01\/montreal-man-accused-of-uttering-threats-and-inciting-hatred\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal man accused of uttering threats and inciting hatred"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2013A Montreal man was charged Wednesday with uttering threats online and inciting hatred as authorities said they were dealing with more hate-related complaints since Sunday’s mass killing at a mosque.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Antonio Padula, 45, was arraigned after being arrested Tuesday night at his residence in Kirkland, a suburb on Montreal’s west island.<\/p>\n

The Crown opposed his release and he will return to court Thursday for a bail hearing.<\/p>\n

Padula’s arrest came just days after a gunman killed six men and wounded several others as they attended prayer at a Quebec City mosque.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The charges filed in court state the alleged comments and threats were made sometime on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Padula, wearing a Juventus jersey, appeared by video and seemed shocked as the Crown opposed his release.<\/p>\n

The prosecution asked Padula to be seen by a psycho-social care worker before his bail hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can’t do that now?,\u201d Padula asked the court, clearly shaken.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not going to handle a night over here,\u201d he told Quebec court Judge Denis Mondor.<\/p>\n

The judge replied, \u201cWe’ll take care of you, sir,\u201d before asking jail guards to take care of him.<\/p>\n

The charge of public incitement of hatred carries a maximum of two years in prison, while uttering threats has a maximum five-year sentence.<\/p>\n

Montreal police said Quebec provincial police told them about the comments.<\/p>\n

The chief spokesman for the provincial force, which probes online threats, took to Twitter on Tuesday to remind users their posts can lead to criminal charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThreatening or hate propaganda on social media, regardless of intention (humour), can be criminal,\u201d said Capt. Guy Lapointe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe inhibitions are less present behind a keyboard,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As of Wednesday afternoon, provincial police had received nearly 175 complaints brought to their attention since Sunday.<\/p>\n

In addition to stepping up patrols around places of worship, Montreal police Chief Philippe Pichet told reporters Tuesday the force has also seen a spike in the number of reports of hate crimes since the mosque attack.<\/p>\n

Last May, Montreal police created a hate-crimes unit to probe such complaints.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the head of Montreal’s anti-radicalization centre told the city’s executive committee it had received 24 calls since Sunday, including 10 related to Islamophobia and four related to the extreme right.<\/p>\n

Herman Deparice-Okomba said four of those cases were transferred to police.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt (24) is an enormous number in 72 hours,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2013A Montreal man was charged Wednesday with uttering threats online and inciting hatred as authorities said they were dealing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":65579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[14407,14526],"class_list":["post-87543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-mosque-attack","tag-threats-and-inciting-hatred","mauthors-sidhartha-banerjee","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}