When Ottawa police announced late Friday afternoon June 27 that they had arrested a man in connection with the painting of the words “FEED ME” in bright red letters on Canada’s national Holocaust monument, the news release listed three charges laid against him.
The suspect, a lawyer formerly employed by the City of Ottawa, was already on leave from his job before he was arrested. The Ottawa police announcement came just shy of three weeks after someone used cans of red paint on or about June 9 to apply broad red brush-strokes and also a message deemed anti-Israel onto the south side of the striking Daniel Libeskind-designed memorial to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Iain Aspenlieder, 46, faces two counts of mischief, including one to a war memorial. That latter charge, adopted by Parliament in 2014, carries with it a minimum $1,000 fine, and depending on how it’s handled, also provides for a range of sentencing of between two weeks or up to 10 years in prison. The same provisions apply to the first charge of mischief over $5,000.
But it’s the third and last charge, criminal harassment by threatening, under Section 264.3 of the Criminal Code, that is attracting plenty of attention because of the “unique” and “novel” use of the provision, lawyers told The CJN.
The charge is more commonly seen in stalking cases such as domestic violence or sexual assault issues–where the victim is an actual person. In this case the charge was brought because, according to court documents, the Jewish community at large was the victim, and was “harassed recklessly”.
All this “caused the said Jewish community to reasonably fear for their safety, contrary to Section 264, subsection (3) of the Criminal Code of Canada,” the documents said.
Criminal harassment charge
Sources close to the case told The CJN that the Crown was called “very creative” for adding this “very unique” way of using the criminal harassment charge by threatening.
According to the source, who we are not identifying because they are not authorized to speak publicly, it is a charge that is not often associated with this type of crime. But it is applicable because one or more members of the Jewish community was afraid for his (sic) safety, the source said.
“The criminal harassment charge is a somewhat novel approach,” acknowledged Paul Lewandowski, the Ottawa defence lawyer who acted temporarily as duty counsel for the accused. “It is a matter that will need to be litigated as to whether spray painting a monument with “FEED ME” constitutes threatening conduct.”
Lewandowski explained that the criminal harassment charge is in contrast to the first two charges of mischief, which he felt were more directly and obviously applicable.
Criminal harassment is usually charged when there is a “specific victim, as opposed to a generalized community,” Lewandowski told The CJN on June 29.
The Hate Crime and Bias unit of the Ottawa police handled the investigation, while the government’s case is being led by Moiz Karimjee, acting Deputy Crown Attorney in the Ottawa Crown Attorney’s office.
Karimjee is also a leader of the Ottawa Crown Attorney’s Hate Crime Prosecution Group and is a founding member of the Ontario Hate Crime Working Group. Karimjee was on vacation at the time of the arrest but came back to work to personally handle the court appearances.
Charge has been used before
It is not the first time that the Ottawa police and the local Crown have laid a criminal harassment charge connected to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the hundreds of street protests that have taken place in Canada since Oct. 7, 2023.
However, the source told The CJN, in a previous case the harassment was directed to a specific individual, not an entire community.
In May 2024, Ottawa police charged Lorna Bernbaum, 74, after an incident during a flag-raising ceremony on May 14, 2024 at Ottawa City Hall. Bernbaum had been filmed giving the finger to a pro-Palestinian protester who had been chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free” during the Israel Independence Day event. The protester’s hijab was then pulled off.
All three charges of assault, criminal harassment and assault were later withdrawn.
According to media reports, Moiz Karimjee, also represented the Crown Attorney’s office in that case, denounced the serious attack on the victim, and told the court it “affected the sense of safety and belonging of other members of Canada’s Arab, Palestinian and Muslim communities.”
But since the suspect had no previous criminal record, the court was told, and had participated in a form of restorative justice with the Muslim community and also issuing an apology to the victim herself, the Crown was dropping the charges.
The court was told that one mitigating factor was the protestor’s chanting of a slogan which some Jewish people feel is calling for their genocide.
“It sounds counter-intuitive to protest a perceived genocide of Palestinians while using a phrase where one interpretation is a call for genocide of the Jewish people,” is how the Karimjee described the problematic phrase, according to a report by CBC News.
Bail hearing July 2
In the Holocaust monument desecration case, the presiding Justice of the Peace Stephen Diblee imposed a publication ban on reporting any evidence and pleadings coming out of Aspenlieder’s application for a bail hearing.
Aspenlieder appeared by video link for his bail hearing on Saturday June 28.
Dibblee reserved his decision until Wednesday, July 2, at 9 a.m., meaning the suspect remained in custody over the weekend, and will remain so until the hearing following the coming Canada Day holiday.
“This is classic antisemitism,” commented Mark Sandler, founder and chair of the Alliance of Canadians Combating Antisemitism, adding that “it’s kind of a classic hate crime.”
Asked whether he thinks the suspect will be kept in custody, or released on bail, Sandler said “It will be really interesting to see,” he told The CJN.
Suspect no longer employed
Ottawa’s mayor, Marc Sutcliffe, said in a social media post June 28 that he was “very disturbed to learn that the person charged is a city employee, who was on leave.”
Sutcliffe said he has asked his officials to take “all appropriate action in light of these developments.”
“As a community and as an employer, the actions at the Monument do not represent our values,” the mayor wrote on X.
Aspenlieder is listed on the Ontario government’s annual website tracking public employees who earned over $100,000 per year. In 2024, the so-called “Sunshine List” website showed him employed as Legal Council, City of Ottawa, with a salary of $148,247. He held that position as far back as 2021, and before that, is listed as an associate legal counsel dating back to 2016.
On Sunday, a spokesperson for the City of Ottawa updated the official message and said Aspenlieder is no longer employed there.
The city didn’t release further details, including when or why exactly the man left his job, or whether he was fired.
“The recent act affecting the National Holocaust monument was deplorable and is counter to the values we seek to uphold in our community. We extend our deepest sympathies to members of our community impacted by this disgraceful act,” wrote Stuart Huxley, Ottawa’s (interim) City Solicitor in an email to The CJN.
Jewish community reaction
Following news of the arrest and charges against the suspect, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs thanked the mayor, and also Ottawa police’s hate crimes investigators for their work.
“It’s said that the Holocaust didn’t begin with death marches or gas chambers. It began with hate speech and dehumanization,” CIJA said in a social media post. “The defacement of the National Holocaust Monument was not just vile—it echoed the hatred that led to history’s greatest crime. Today, on the streets of North America, we again see how violent words lead to violent actions.”
Artur Wilczynski, a board member with the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship in Ottawa, which runs tours of the monument and conducts education programs, also issued a statement on social media.
“The Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship and the Jewish Federation of Ottawa made a presentation on antisemitism to the City of Ottawa on May 27th. It seems like we need to go back and continue our efforts,” said Wilczynski, a former Canadian diplomat and former antisemitism advisor at the University of Ottawa.
Lawrence Greenspon, an Ottawa lawyer who is co-chair of the National Holocaust Monument Committee, declined to comment specifically on the arrest of a suspect for the June 9 incident. However, from his reply to The CJN, it appears the Jewish community has still not gotten over what happened to the $7.25 million monument.
“I will only say that we are deeply saddened by what took place at the national Holocaust monument,” said Greenspon, who helps organize Holocaust memorial ceremonies several times per year at the monument, which opened in 2017, just west of Parliament Hill.
While the National Capital Commission, which is responsible for the monument, quickly sent work crews out on Monday, June 9 to powerwash the offensive graffiti off of the concrete walls, the impact on the Canadian Jewish community, and beyond, was not as easily erased.
About 200 people, including Greenspon, attended an interfaith solidarity rally held at the site of the monument on Sunday June 15.
At that event, he told the audience the graffiti about the humanitarian situation facing Palestinians in Gaza during the ongoing Israeli military campaign against Hamas was being “weaponized”.
“The hate messaging was not only a violation of memory, but a reminder that in today’s world, antisemitism often wears the mask of anti-Zionism,” Greenspon said in his June 15 address.
“It is an abomination that the Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews, is now being weaponized against the Jewish people by those who hate.”
Other high profile cases
After Canada Day celebrations in 2006, several teens and also a young adult were filmed urinating on the National War Memorial, and Ottawa police charged the adult with mischief.
However, the Crown later withdrew the charge when the suspect apologized to veterans, paid a fine and did community service. The two teenagers, one who was extremely drunk at the time, were not charged.
Ottawa police also did not press charges, despite national outrage, when participants in the 2022 anti-vaccine truckers convoy were seen dancing on and parking on the same site.
A Winnipeg man was sentenced to 60 days in jail for urinating on a war memorial in Sudbury in 2006.
The arrest and charges against Aspenlieder were announced a week after a popular global travel magazine, Time Out Travel, named the Canadian National Holocaust Monument as one of the world’s most beautiful buildings. The Ottawa site was 23rd out of the 24 buildings, including the Taj Mahal and a Lutheran Evangelical church known as Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavik, Iceland.
