The grandmother of a 19-year-old Winnipegger facing terrorism-related charges says she burst into tears when she heard the seriousness of the allegations against him.
Nevin Young was arrested on Jan. 12 on 26 counts of mischief under $5,000 after he allegedly spray-painted antisemitic graffiti, including the initials of an international extremist group, on various structures within a Charleswood neighbourhood over a three-month period late last year.
On Tuesday, RCMP announced he was facing four new charges related to terrorist activity.
Alice Nepinak said she was shocked when she heard the news.
“I burst into tears because I know as soon as it turns federal — I mean like this is serious, serious stuff,” she said.
Nepinak said Young has ADHD and global developmental delay, a diagnosis for children who are significantly delayed in their development.
She said the 19-year-old was still attending high school, and wasn’t expected to graduate until he was 21 because of accommodations due to learning challenges.
“He’s not a crazy terrorist. He’s just a poor boy that has issues,” she said.
“He doesn’t have that full-grown-person maturity. And the potential to be thrown in jail and locked away for 10 years, you know, how do you contend with that if you don’t quite even understand how the world really works?”
Investigation found link to terrorist group: RCMP
Young has been charged with facilitating terrorist activity, participation in activity of a terrorist group, and two counts of commission of an offence for a terrorist group.
In an email Thursday, the RCMP said city police identified “material that falls within the national security mandate,” leading to the new charges.
The RCMP said online radicalization is part of the investigation, and that there are links to the racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist group M.K.Y., also known as Maniac Murder Cult.
Several “M.K.Y.” graffiti tags and swastikas were spray-painted over Charleswood. People in the neighbourhood and members of Winnipeg’s Jewish community say the messages were hateful and made them feel unsafe in their own city.
Georgios Samaras, an assistant professor of public policy at King’s College London who specializes in extremism, said M.K.Y. is just one in a network of small groups of neo-Nazis often radicalized online, but trying to translate that into offline action.
Samaras said the groups “act like cults.”
“The people who join such groups … are people disillusioned with society,” he said. “They’re recruited because they want to associate themselves with terrorist activities that will lead to [the] destabilization of society.”
Groups target ‘vulnerable’
Some of Young’s neighbours said he was a quiet kid who often wore a face-covering and a full brim hat. The neighbours said he mostly stayed inside.
Another family member, whom CBC is not identifying because he fears for his safety, told CBC News “he just sees [stuff] on the internet that he believes in.”
Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said groups such as M.K.Y. target the vulnerable.
“They’re vulnerable because they’re socially isolated. Maybe they’re vulnerable because they are not entirely well,” he said, adding that it “could be for mental health reasons as well.”
An alleged M.K.Y. leader — a 20-year-old from the eastern European nation of Georgia who was arrested last year in Moldova over accusations of planning and soliciting a mass casualty attack in New York City, told an undercover FBI agent on an online messaging platform that in order to join M.K.Y., “we ask people for brutal beating, arson/explosion or murder vids on camera,” according to U.S. indictment documents.
“The vandalism case … would actually be on the lighter end of activities that they try to promote,” Balgord said. “It’s where a person might start doing things to get clout and attention.”
‘They’re stepping on his human rights’
Young was re-arrested for the terrorism-related charges while he was still in custody at the Winnipeg Remand Centre.
Judy Kliewer, federal Crown prosecutor in the case, said in an e-mail a continuation of his bail hearing will be set for April 7.
By that date, the 19-year-old will have spent 85 days in custody with no decision on his bail.
Nepinak said the authorities are “stepping on his human rights.” She said that, during a phone call, he told his mom that he wasn’t eating, and was “not doing well.”
“He was like, you know, upset and crying,” Nepinak said. “He was trying to say goodbye to his mom, thinking … that he wasn’t going to be getting out.”
None of the charges against Young have been tested in court.
The grandmother of a 19-year-old Winnipeg man accused of participating in and committing a crime for a terrorist group says her grandson isn’t the person the charges make him out to be.
