When Abdirazak Mahdi Ahmed pleaded guilty last month to his involvement in the November 2023 shooting at Montreal’s Yeshiva Gedola school, prosecutors acknowledged that they could not establish an anti Jewish motive. But with mounting evidence that criminals are being recruited and paid to attack Jewish institutions across Canada, a more disturbing possibility deserves consideration. The men who carried out the shooting may not have been the people who decided to attack the school in the first place.
The practice is hardly theoretical. In June, Mohamed Ilyess Akodad, convicted of attacking Congregation Beth Tikvah and the neighbouring Federation CJA offices in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, told a Montreal courtroom that he had been offered $15,000 to set fire to two buildings and a vehicle. According to his testimony, he was approached at a party, provided with transportation and materials, and directed to the targets. He ultimately received $3,000 after failing to complete the entire assignment. He claimed that he did not know the buildings were Jewish institutions and that his motivation was money rather than anti Jewism.
Someone, however, knew exactly which buildings were being targeted. Akodad’s account described an organized attack in which the person committing the crime was little more than hired labour. The individual who allegedly arranged the operation has not been publicly identified.
Similar operations have been uncovered elsewhere in Canada. In June, Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw revealed that investigators had identified networks recruiting young people through encrypted messaging applications to carry out shootings for payment. The attacks included Jewish institutions and the United States Consulate. Recruits were reportedly instructed to record the shootings as proof that their assignments had been completed.
Canadian intelligence agencies have also warned about foreign organizations, including Iranian-linked networks, using local criminals to carry out attacks against Jewish targets. As Montreal Jewish News previously reported, federal intelligence assessments have identified criminal intermediaries as part of the growing threat facing Jewish communities in Canada.
Against that background, the selection of Yeshiva Gedola as a target becomes particularly suspicious.
The school sits on Deacon Road, a quiet residential street in Côte-des-Neiges, next to a palliative care hospice and across from Le Sanctuaire. It is a traditional Orthodox institution devoted to Torah education, with no association with Zionism. It has no prominent political profile and none of the characteristics that might ordinarily attract the attention of anti-Israel activists. It is the kind of place someone would have to know about, or be told about, before setting out to find it.
Yet someone travelled to that specific building before dawn in a stolen vehicle and fired several shots into its entrance. Given the documented use of paid criminals to attack Jewish institutions, the possibility that the participants were recruited to carry out someone else’s instructions deserves serious scrutiny. The obscurity of the location makes the identity of whoever selected it particularly important. Those involved in the shooting may have carried out the attack, but that does not necessarily mean they planned it.
The November 12, 2023 attack was the second time Yeshiva Gedola had been targeted in four days. On November 9, gunfire struck both Yeshiva Gedola and Azrieli Talmud Torah, another Jewish school. Neither of those earlier shootings has resulted in publicly announced charges.
Investigators eventually connected Ahmed to the November 12 attack through DNA evidence recovered from a stolen Acura RDX, cellphone records and statements he made to an undercover police officer placed in his cell. The vehicle had been stolen in Vaudreuil-Dorion before the shooting and was subsequently recovered in Lachine.
A second suspect, Feijhoo-Leito Joseph, was arrested in February 2025. Joseph was 19 at the time and lived in Vaudreuil, while Ahmed was reported to have lived in nearby Les Cèdres. Online postings have reported that the gun related charges against Joseph have been dropped and he is only facing car theft related charges. Montreal Jewish News has not been able to independently confirm this information.
The agreed facts presented in Ahmed’s case did not establish whether he personally fired the weapon, drove the vehicle or participated in another capacity. Nor did they provide an explanation for the selection of the school. Prosecutors said they lacked sufficient evidence to prove an antisemitic motive beyond a reasonable doubt.
That leaves an important distinction between the motivation of an individual attacker and the motivation of whoever might have commissioned an attack. Akodad claimed he firebombed a synagogue because he wanted money, not because he hated Jews. But the person who allegedly offered him that money had already selected Jewish institutions as targets. The absence of antisemitic motivation on the part of a hired criminal would hardly eliminate antisemitism as the reason for the crime.
The same distinction deserves attention in the Yeshiva Gedola investigation. Although no evidence has publicly emerged linking Ahmed or Joseph to a paid criminal network, the methods now being documented by Canadian authorities make the possibility of outside direction worthy of examination. The use of a stolen vehicle, the early morning timing and the selection of an obscure Jewish school warrant particular scrutiny.
Ahmed, now 23, is scheduled to return to court on October 19, when the Crown and defence are expected to jointly recommend a prison sentence of five and a half years, with credit for time already served. As Montreal Jewish News reported following his guilty plea, that proceeding concerns only the second shooting at Yeshiva Gedola and does not resolve the attacks three days earlier.
Police and intelligence agencies now acknowledge that attacks on Jewish institutions are sometimes organized by individuals who remain far removed from the actual crime scene. They recruit others, provide instructions and, in some cases, pay them to do the dirty work.
If such an arrangement was behind the Yeshiva Gedola shooting, prosecuting those who arrived at the school would address only part of the crime. Whoever selected that quiet, largely unknown Jewish institution, arranged the operation and sent people there with a gun would remain beyond the reach of the prosecution.
The conviction of a participant is an important result, but identifying who wanted the school attacked and why, may prove considerably more important.
Leave a Reply