Federal officials say that Alberta separatists going around Ottawa and repeatedly meeting with U.S. officials to advance their cause is legal for Canadians, within certain limits, even though similar behaviour could be prohibited elsewhere.
When separatist organizer Jeffrey Rath claimed last week he was meeting with officials connected to the White House to garner support for Alberta’s independence, Edmonton talk show host Ryan Jespersen responded by saying, “In a lot of countries, this tomfoolery would get you strung up for treason.”
But unlike the U.S., whose little-used Logan Act criminalizes so-called private diplomacy, Canada has no law on the books stopping private citizens from meeting with representatives of foreign governments.
One of three men accused of a kidnapping plot was an illegal border crosser whose refugee claim was denied in 2018.Despite this, Azerbaijani national Osman Azizov was allowed to remain in Canada for a further six years, during which time he allegedly fell in with an ISIS sympathizer and hatched a plot to kidnap random women from the streets of Toronto, and also planned to violently target the Jewish community. ...Azizov, 18, was already notorious for receiving bail only days after he was arrested as an alleged accomplice in what police described as “armed, coordinated attempts to kidnap women.”But according to Global, Azizov’s very presence in Canada was due to a cascading series of border security oversights.Documents uncovered by Global revealed Azizov first entered Canada with his family in 2017 by illegally crossing the border near Lacolle, Que.He would thus have been in the first wave of an unprecedented flood of what Canadian authorities would come to refer to as “irregular border-crossers.”Shortly after the 2017 inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, the White House implemented a ban on refugee admissions from six Muslim-majority nations.This, in turn, prompted a social media statement from then prime minister Justin Trudeau declaring “to those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith.”Within weeks, Canada was subject to a steady stream of foreign nationals entering the country illegally from the United States in order to claim asylum. By year’s end, border officials were tracking an average of 76 irregular border-crossers per day.As per statistics maintained by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, throughout 2018 only about half of the asylum claims being reviewed by authorities were approved, with the other half being charted as “abandoned” or “rejected.”According to Global, Azizov’s family was placed in the “rejected” category. Their asylum claim was rejected in 2018, and appeals to both the Refugee Appeal Division and the Federal Court had run their course by 2019.As to why he was still in the country, in 2024 Azizov reportedly qualified for a program allowing foreigners to stay in Canada on “humanitarian and compassionate considerations.”As such, at the time of his arrest, Azizov would have held status as a permanent resident; typically the last stop before obtaining full Canadian citizenship.
Elkana Bohbot, one of the Israelis abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, was held in Gaza for 738 days. In an interview with Ynet on Monday, he revealed some of the horrors he endured at the hands of his captors.
Nearly two years of captivity were marked by severe physical abuse, psychological torment and fear over the fate of his family. “It was two years of suffering and uncertainty,” Bohbot told Ynet.
Throughout his captivity, Bohbot said his thoughts were consumed by his wife, Rivka, and their young son, Re’em.
“What about them? Where are they? What did they tell the child? How does he cope? It was the hardest,” he said.
Before Oct. 7, Bohbot was an entrepreneur and one of the organizers of the Nova music festival, which he helped plan for six months with childhood friends and business partners Osher and Michael Vaknin. The Vaknin twins were murdered at the festival, along with 376 others.
“We waited so much for this production and worked on it a lot,” said Bohbot. “After all the difficulties Rivka and I went through, it felt like a peak moment. And then the nightmare came.”
As rocket fire began that morning of Oct. 7, 2023, Bohbot urged festivalgoers to flee. What followed, he said, was chaos. Hamas terrorists stormed the area, shooting civilians at close range and documenting the killings. They shot people who were already dead. Bohbot called them “human animals.”
Bohbot was captured and taken into Gaza. He described being beaten during the abduction and sustaining a severe leg injury when a terrorist pressed a hot gun barrel against his leg. The wound was so deep that when he got to Gaza, his captors suspected he had been shot and attempted to treat it, but he refused. …
One of the first videos released by Hamas showed wounded Israeli captives bound and lying face down. Bohbot was among them, his terrified expression described by Ynet as burned into the Israeli consciousness.
“The first thing they did to us in Gaza was beat us,” he said. At one point, he recalled praying to be shot rather than lynched. “I only thought about Re’em — about him growing up knowing his father died in a Hamas lynching.”
However, the psychological abuse often surpassed the physical violence, he said. His captors repeatedly lied to him about the fate of family members, exploiting what they identified as his greatest vulnerability.
“They told me my mother was dead, that my wife was dead,” he said. “One terrorist asked my son’s name and then said, ‘I pray that your son dies,’ and began praying in front of me.”
While Bohbot was held in underground tunnels, his wife led a relentless public campaign for his release, meeting with officials and speaking at every available forum, all while raising their son alone.
Hamas released four propaganda videos of Bohbot during his captivity. He revealed that another video — never published — was even more brutal. Captives were beaten and injured so it would appear as if they had attempted suicide, he said.
“They smashed my hand for that,” he added, showing visible marks.
In the final months before his release, conditions worsened significantly. Bohbot said he and other hostages were starved, constantly harassed and forced to watch videos of Hamas attacks on Israeli soldiers.
“You’re in a booby-trapped tunnel, surrounded by terrorists and explosives,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s total helplessness.”
He also described repeated “games” in which terrorists threatened mutilation or execution, demanding that hostages choose who would be harmed. On one occasion, a captor arrived with a knife and demanded that they choose a hostage for him to cut a finger from. They begged and pleaded with him, and the threat was postponed.
Bohbot said he briefly considered escape during the first week of captivity, before being moved underground.
“In a tunnel, there is no difference between you and a dead person,” he said. “You are buried alive.”
