The Akbari Sentencing: Hate, Threats, and a Missed Opportunity for Real Deterrence
- ALCCA Staff
- Aug 8
- 9 min read
Updated: Aug 10
Part I: Introduction
Back in March 2024, Waisuddin Akbari had a deeply troubling conversation with a salesperson at a car dealership. As later described by the trial judge, Akbari expressed “dehumanizing and conspiratorial opinions about the State of Israel, Israelis, and Jewish people more generally.”
He indicated that Israel and the Jews controlled world events and benefitted from interest payments on car loans, that Israel plots to exterminate anyone who is not Jewish and seeks to enslave and poison the world. He equated Israelis and Jews to roaches who should be exterminated or a cancer that should be eliminated.
Most significantly, he told the salesperson, “Before you go, I want you to remember my name and remember my face because the next time you see it, I’ll be on the news.” And “I know when I’m going to die because I’m going to plant a bomb in every synagogue in Toronto and blow them up to kill as many Jews as possible.” When the shocked salesperson asked if he was serious, Akbari responded “Yes, I’m serious. I’ll make sure those attacks are filmed and posted online so the world can see what I’ve done.”
To the salesperson’s credit, he reported the comments to the police who charged Akbari with threatening damage (to synagogues) and threatening death to the Jewish people. The trial judge rejected Akbari’s denials and convicted him of both charges.
At Akbari’s sentencing hearing, the prosecution introduced into evidence five Community Impact Statements¹ and filed hate crime statistical reports of the York Regional and Toronto Police Services. These statistical reports documented the high levels of antisemitic hate crimes with which our community is all too familiar.
On July 28, the trial judge sentenced Akbari to a 60-day conditional sentence. A conditional sentence is regarded by the justice system as a term of imprisonment but is commonly known as “house arrest” because the offender, subject to certain exceptions, is confined to his home for the period of imprisonment. The conditional sentence is to be followed by a three-year probationary term.
In imposing this sentence, the trial judge rejected the prosecution’s position seeking a four to six month jail sentence.
Many members of the community and some media have severely criticized the trial judge’s failure to impose a “real jail” sentence, as opposed to house arrest. The decision to charge Akbari only with threatening offences has also attracted criticism and calls for legislative amendment.
In our view, some of these criticisms have merit; some do not.
This is an opportunity for a more detailed discussion of these issues by three senior criminal lawyers. ALCCA’s Chair, Mark Sandler, has trained (and continues to train) police and prosecutors on the appropriate use of criminal law to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate and has appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada and before a variety of legislative committees respecting hate-motivated crimes. Co-trainer Rochelle Direnfeld is a former senior prosecutor with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General and a former member of the Ministry’s Hate Crime Working Group who is now ALCCA’s Senior Criminal Counsel and chairs the Canadian Criminal Law Working Group (CCLWG). Cynthia Fromstein is a member of the CCLWG and has been a highly regarded criminal lawyer for over 42 years.
In Part II of this editorial, we summarize the trial judge’s reasons for sentence. And in Part III, we comment on the sentence imposed and the criticism levelled against it.
Part II: The Trial Judge’s Reasons
After summarizing the findings of fact he made after a contested trial, the trial judge reviewed the aggravating and mitigating factors to take into consideration.
The Nature of the Threats and Aggravating Factors
His Honour noted that Akbari was not being sentenced for taking any material steps to act on the threats he made and that his guilt was “based on empty threats he communicated to a stranger, mistakenly assuming Mr. Ahmad would be sympathetic to Akbari’s own warped and hateful worldview. There was no effort to publicize his threats beyond the conversation he shared with Mr. Ahmad.”
The trial judge’s finding that these were “empty threats” was based on the police investigation that discovered no evidence that Akbari took any steps to act on these threats or conveyed these same thoughts on social media or elsewhere. Nonetheless, His Honour did not find Akbari’s threats to be harmless. He was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the threats were clearly motivated by bias, prejudice and hate towards Israelis and Jews. Under the Criminal Code, this motivation constitutes an aggravating factor on sentencing. His Honour correctly noted,
“Hate-based threats are not just words, they are the gasoline upon which even more serious offences burn. Where hate is normalized, harm follows.”
His Honour reviewed in detail the Community Impact Statements and was clearly moved by all of them. He said it was impossible to overstate the sense of fear, anger and frustration Akbari’s threats instilled in the broader Jewish community. He highlighted several common themes in the five statements:
The “state of perpetual high anxiety” many Canadian Jews live in as they attend synagogue, drop their children off at Jewish day schools or merely go about their daily activities. He noted the stark rise in reported hate crimes since October 7, 2023, as reflected in the filed hate crime statistics.
The threat against communal Jewish infrastructure is felt no less seriously than a threat against the Jewish community itself. Synagogues should be safe sanctuaries, but they have necessarily become transformed into fortified security zones in direct contravention of their purpose as open, welcoming spaces.
Akbari’s threats were not just directed at Jews and Israelis but also undermined social cohesion within the broader Canadian community, weakening the foundations of freedom, security and pluralism for all Canadians.
The trial judge cautioned himself that Akbari is not to be punished for the “landslide of hatred” directed at the Canadian Jewish community since October 7, 2023. He is, however, responsible for exacerbating it and his actions served to further traumatize an already traumatized community.
Mitigating Factors
In mitigation, His Honour took into consideration Akbari’s background including his flight from war in Afghanistan with his grandparents as a child, leading to his eventual emigration to Canada where he became a citizen, married, raised a family and opened a business. He noted that Akbari suffered from a gambling addiction, losing significant sums of money but that the addiction is now under control. His Honour was impressed by Akbari’s strong network of support from family and the Ismaili community (though not support for his conduct).
His Honour appeared to have been significantly moved by the ancillary impact Akbari’s conduct had upon his life including negative media coverage and the fact that the franchisor of his restaurant ended the franchise agreement upon learning of his conviction, leaving him financially dependent on his savings and on others. His Honour was also impressed by Akbari’s expression of remorse through a prepared statement that he read at the conclusion of the sentencing hearing.
Akbari spoke directly to the Jewish community and underscored its right to feel safe, especially in its places of worship and advised that he has undertaken informing and educating himself about the Jewish religion including reaching out to a Rabbi (through his counsel) in the hopes of learning more about Judaism. He also expressed a desire to work with the Jewish community to combat antisemitism. [As an aside, we observe it was difficult to treat Akbari’s attitude as entirely remorseful, given his denial of having uttered the threats proven to have been made by him.]
The Sentencing Conclusion
The trial judge appropriately rejected the defence position that Akbari should be granted a discharge with conditions (a sentence that does not involve a formal conviction). A discharge would not reflect the gravity of this hate-motivated offence. He stated that a threat to bomb Toronto synagogues to kill as many Jews as possible had to be placed “near the extreme end of the spectrum for such offences,” and that the sentencing principles of deterrence and denunciation must be the primary sentencing goals in this case.
Based on those principles, he concluded that a custodial sentence was the only appropriate penalty in the circumstances. However, he also considered the four days of pre-trial custody Akbari served, and his uneventful behaviour while subject to bail conditions for nearly a year and a half.
The trial judge felt that the totality of circumstances favoured a 60-day custodial sentence to be served in the community (as explained below) followed by the maximum period of probation permitted at law (three years). The judge was satisfied that this sentence will send the appropriate message to Akbari and the community that “hateful threats against Jews and their institutions will be met by a significant sanction.”
The 60-day conditional sentence was to be served under “house arrest” (that is, confined to the accused’s home) with limited exceptions. Conditions of both the custodial portion of the sentence and the probationary period included:
Participating in counselling for gambling addiction and antisemitism education as directed by his conditional sentence supervisor or probation officer and signing necessary releases to permit monitoring of progress with that counselling;
Not possessing any weapon or incendiary devices (in addition to a separate 10 year weapons prohibition);
Not attending or being within 200 metres of any synagogue, place of Jewish worship, Jewish community centre, Jewish school or daycare or any gathering organized by or for the Jewish community, except for purposes of counselling as directed by his conditional sentence supervisor or probation officer.
Part III: Commentary
At the outset, it must be observed that the threatening charges represented the appropriate charges in this situation. There was no evidence, despite a detailed police investigation, that Akbari had done anything to act upon his deeply troubling, hate-motivated rant. Had he engaged in any activities in furtherance of these rants, a range of other charges may well have been available, including anti-terrorism sections of the Criminal Code. Additionally, he made his utterances during the course of a private conversation, making the hate propaganda sections of the Criminal Code inapplicable.
However, this is cold comfort for the Jewish community. Law enforcement we meet with are justifiably concerned about terror activities committed by “lone wolves”, that is, those who act or intend to act with no known affiliations with groups or organizations. Indeed, the authorities have thwarted a disturbingly high number of terror plans, some by lone wolves, initiated in Canada. (This speaks to a larger and unacceptable tolerance in Canada for extremist activities and rhetoric which fuels this extremism.) Lone wolves may have little or no prior engagement with police or little or no social media presence.
Akbari’s unprompted disclosure (without any apparent trepidation) to a complete stranger of his professed plans to target the Jewish community, and its institutions is chilling. The absence of evidence of prior extremist conduct or rhetoric will not mean, in every case, that an accused was merely engaged in “empty threats.”
The trial judge’s reasons, up to that point when he imposed the actual sentence, were in many ways impeccable. He recognized the profound impact of this offence and other antisemitic hate crimes on the Jewish community and society at large. He correctly identified the themes contained in the Community Impact Statements. He appreciated the importance of the hate crime statistics – the prevalence of antisemitic hate crimes supported the need for strong judicial messaging.
He acknowledged that the crimes were motivated by bias, prejudice or hate, as defined in s. 718.2(a)(i) of the Criminal Code, making deterrence and denunciation the primary sentencing principles. He appropriately cited recent cases including R. v. Leslie Bory² where Justice Ramsay described the “surge in anti-Jewish acts” as crimes for which “every Canadian is a victim. Poison has been injected into our public discourse and that poison pollutes the environment in which all Canadians exchange their views.”
He also quoted Justice Townsend in R. v. Gobin³ who concluded that “a significant jail sentence is the only way for the principles of general deterrence and denunciation to be met. A significant jail sentence is proportionate to the seriousness of the offence, the degree of responsibility of the offender, and the significant impact that this offence has had on the individual complainants and the larger Jewish community.” Finally, he correctly stated that a jail sentence may be the only available sentence in the circumstances.
However, in our respectful view, it is difficult to reconcile the trial judge’s strong findings with the sentence ultimately imposed. Sentencing is admittedly a highly individualized process. Canadian courts have significant discretion as to the sentence imposed, having regard to the multiplicity of factors in each case.
Having said that, deterrence involves not merely deterring this specific offender from re-offending but also generally deterring others from offending. In our view, general deterrence was not adequately served by a custodial sentence of 60 days (at the lower end of the custodial scale) or more significantly, by such a sentence being served only by way of house arrest. The length and terms of probation, while significant to Akbari’s rehabilitation, did not obviate the need for a real jail sentence to be imposed. We have no confidence that like-minded offenders will be deterred in any way by the prospect of house arrest.
This is especially true when, as the trial judge himself observed, a threat to kill as many Jews as possible “had to be placed at the extreme end of the spectrum for such offences.”
We are now seeing – and appropriately so – more criminal charges being laid in cases involving allegations of antisemitic hate motivation. Education and training of police and prosecutors as to the tools available to them to combat hate, and as to the form that contemporary antisemitism takes are critically important.
Here, the police and prosecutors did their jobs in a sensitive and timely manner. We disagree with the trial judge’s assessment of the appropriate sentence. In our view, this represented a missed opportunity for general deterrence and denunciation in a case that called out for it.
However, at the same time, the trial judge’s reasons represent another judicial acknowledgement of the prevalence of antisemitic hate crimes and their impact on the Canadian Jewish community.
Hopefully, that message will not be lost on all participants in the criminal justice system.
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Endnotes
B’nai Brith Canada, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, The Toronto Board of Rabbis, The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation.
Unreported decision of Ramsay, J. Ontario SCJ, March 10, 2025 at p. 55.
2025 ONCJ 266 at para. 33-36.