An anti-Semitic website launched by a suspended York University student is back online, even though its content landed the student on an Interpol wanted list.
The website, which was pulled from the Internet by a Canadian web-hosting provider in March 2010, went back online in late December.
The website, called filthyjewishterrorists.com, was set up by York University student and Mississauga resident Salman An-Noor Hossain. Hossain was added to Interpol’s database of fugitives in late November at the request of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP). Hossain had been suspended from York since the OPP investigation began in March 2010, according to the Toronto Star.
The website is currently run through a host in Switzerland. The new website is registered with generic information, making it impossible to locate Hossain. His charges were categorized under crimes against life and health and organized transnational crime, according to a wanted notice released by Interpol on Nov. 29.
The site accuses “the Jewish terrorist community” of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 and of planning to blow up Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque at an unspecified point in the future.
Hossain was charged by the OPP in summer 2010 with two counts of advocating or promoting genocide against an identifiable group and three counts of wilfully promoting hatred, according to the CBC. He failed to appear for his court date, prompting the police to issue a warrant for his arrest. According to the CBC, police believe Hossain is currently hiding either in Uganda or his native Bangladesh. The OPP could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Criminal Code of Canada has three provisions for hate propaganda, said Richard Moon, law professor at the University of Windsor. Section 318 of the Code, which Moon said in his opinion is the most applicable in this case, covers the advocation of genocide, which is defined in the Code as “any acts committed with intent to destroy an identifiable group —such as killing members of the group, or deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction.”
Section 319, which covers the public incitement of hatred, is also applicable, said Moon, as Hossain could be seen as “wilfully promoting hatred.”
"Any of these laws that restrict the expression of views, no matter how odious, will always raise the question of freedom of expression," said Moon.
However, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees these freedoms only within “reasonable limits,” he said. Hossain’s case is most likely one that “certainly would fall in an area where most people would have no difficulty calling a reasonable restriction,” he said.
This cannot be said with absolute certainty, however, as the laws are subject to interpretation on a case to case basis, according to Moon.