The grandmother of a 19 -year -old Winnipegger who faces charges related to terrorism says she started crying when she heard the seriousness of the accusations against her.
Nevin Young was arrested on January 12 for 26 pranks below $ 5,000 after he allegedly painted the anti -Semitic graffiti, including the initials of an international extremist group, in several structures within a Charleswood neighborhood for a period of three months at the end of last year.
On Tuesday, RCMP announced that it faced four new positions related to the terrorist activity.
Alice Napinak said she was surprised when she heard the news.
“I stirred because I know it as soon as it becomes federal, I mean that this is something serious and serious,” he said.
Napinak said Young has ADHD and global delay in development, a diagnosis for children who are significantly delayed in their development.
She said that the 19 -year -old still attended high school and was not expected to graduate until he was 21 years old due to accommodations due to learning challenges.
“He is not a crazy terrorist. He is just a poor child who has problems,” he said.
“He does not have that maturity of cultivated people in full rule. And the potential to be imprisoned and locked up for 10 years, you know, how do you lead if you don’t even understand how the world really works?”
The investigation found a link to the terrorist group: RCMP
Young has been accused of facilitating terrorist activity, participation in the activity of a terrorist group and two commission positions for a crime for a terrorist group.
In an email on Thursday, the RCMP said that the city police identified “material that falls within the national security mandate”, which leads to new positions.
The RCMP said that online radicalization is part of the investigation, and that there are links with the racial and ethnically motivated violent extremist group Mky, also known as the cult of manic murder.
Several graffiti “Mky” tags were painted with spray about Charleswood. People in the neighborhood and the members of the Jewish community of Winnipeg say that the messages were hateful and made them feel insecure in their own city.
Georgios Samaras, an assistant public policy professor at King’s College London who specializes in extremism, said Mky is only one in a network of small neo -Nazis groups often radicalized online, but trying to translate that into an off -line action.
Samaras said the groups “act as cults.”
“People who join such groups … are disappointed people with society,” he said. “They are recruited because they want to partner with terrorist activities that will lead to [the] destabilization of society. “
‘Vulnerable’ target groups
Some of Young’s neighbors said he was a quiet child who often wore a full edge and sewing hat. The neighbors said it stayed mainly inside.
Another family member, whom CBC is not identifying because he fears for his safety, he told CBC News ” [stuff] on the Internet in which he believes. ”
Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Asceum Network, said groups like Mky point to vulnerable.
“They are vulnerable because they are socially isolated. They may be vulnerable because they are not quite well,” he said, adding that “it could also be for mental health reasons.”
An alleged leader of Mky, a 20 -year -old from the nation of Eastern Europe from Georgia who was arrested last year in Moldova for accusations of planning and request of an attack of massive victims in New York City, told an undercover FBI agent on an online messaging platform that to join Mky, “we asked people to win, Arason/Explosion or murder in a murder or murder in a murder or murder Chamber, “according to the United States documents.
“The case of vandalism … would actually be at the lighter end of the activities they try to promote,” said Balgord. “It is where a person could start doing things to get influence and attention.”
‘They are treading their human rights’
Young was arrested for charges related to terrorism while it was still in custody in the Winnipeg Remand Center.
Judy Kliewer, federal prosecutor of the Crown in the case, said an email a continuation of her bail audience will be established for April 7.
For that date, the 19 -year -old will have spent 85 days in custody without decision on his bail.
Napinak said the authorities are “stepping on their human rights.” She said that, during a phone call, she told her mother that she was not eating and that “it was not right.”
“He was like, you know, annoying and crying,” said Napinak. “He was trying to say goodbye to his mother, thinking … that he wasn’t going to come out.”
None of the charges against Young has been tested in court.
The grandmother of a 19 -year -old Winnipeg man accused of participating and committing a crime for a terrorist group says that her grandson is not the person that the charges make it.
