Quebec man who threatened Trudeau, Legault online sentenced to 20 months in jail
A Quebec man who pleaded guilty to threatening Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier François Legault has been sentenced to 20 months in jail.
The room is freezing cold. There’s a gauzy curtain over the window that lets in soft morning light. The street outside feels forbidden and hostile. If not dangerous.
And now to the story of Anzorat Wali.
The empty room is where she and her older sister Nilab practise taekwondo. Anzorat has a black belt, and a fistful of medals that jingle. She can’t remember exactly how many golds she’s won, but it’s a lot.
And it all stopped the day the Taliban arrived. The shattering of dreams. The end of freedom. A life that now feels hopeless, and she’s only 19.
“I don’t want something big,” she told me, in a soft voice and confident English, sometimes smiling, sometimes unbearably sad. “It’s our right to do something for ourselves, to fight for ourselves.”
They practise at home because all the gyms are closed to Afghan women and girls. Taekwondo has become a world reserved for boys only. Boys have rights. Girls don’t.
“Women’s rights mean nothing to them,” she says, a teenager’s lament that comes across more as weariness, than anger. “We’re getting worse day by day, just sitting at home, eating and sleeping. Nothing else.”
The two of them used to train by jogging around the neighborhood. Everybody knew about the Wali sisters. The Taliban took that away. Now, they rarely go outside, trapped in their home by fear.
“I had lots of hope and dreams,” says Anzorat, her voice trailing off into tears. “We have nothing now. Our rights, our freedom, our jobs. I mean we have nothing here.”
She uses that word a lot. “Nothing.” In two syllables, it sums up a young state of mind, adrift in despair.
She took up taekwondo for the purest of reasons: to learn to fight. Years of training have given her strong, firm legs and a forceful kick.
“It was necessary for any girl to know fighting for self defence in Afghanistan.”
But then she started winning competitions, and out of that grew her biggest dream, to compete at the Olympics. This is a young woman never been satisfied winning silver or bronze.
“What an athlete wants is to do something for myself, for my country,” wiping away more tears without embarrassment.
Her family is Tajik, which is not a good thing in Afghanistan these days. It was a Tajik leader who resisted the longest against the Taliban.
Her brother Milad worked for the foreign affairs ministry. Her sister and her mother held good positions in other departments. They were untroubled and comfortable. The Taliban took that away too. Now they’re all jobless.
“Life was so good,” he says. “Just a normal life. There were no problems.”
Until a beating from the Taliban put him in the hospital. He was waiting in line to apply for passports. Relatives in Vancouver are trying to get them to Canada.
“I felt just a small pain, but after one night it got worse. I told my family this is going to kill me.”
He is immensely proud and protective of his younger sister. As happens when somebody close to you achieves astonishing success.
“She was in love with her sport,” he says. “And when I saw her, she had a happy look on her face.”
The look her face gives off now is more like sorrow. She returns to the words that slip out of her mouth like a moan.
“We have nothing now. We have nothing.”
A Quebec man who pleaded guilty to threatening Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier François Legault has been sentenced to 20 months in jail.
Pius Suter scored with 1:39 left and the Vancouver Canucks advanced to the second round of the NHL playoffs with a 1-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Friday night in Game 6.
The adorable trio of child actors from the 1993 classic comedy 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' which starred the late and great Robin Williams, are all grown up and looking back on their seminal time together.
The erstwhile group of senators and MPs studying the federal government's invocation of the Emergencies Act over the "Freedom Convoy" was supposed to present its findings in December. December of 2022, that is.
The Ukrainian village of Ocheretyne has been battered by fighting, drone footage obtained by The Associated Press shows. The village has been a target for Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
A 60-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman killed in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 earlier this week have been identified by the Consulate General of India in Toronto.
A delegation of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was in Cairo on Saturday as Egyptian state media reported "noticeable progress" in ongoing cease-fire talks with Israel while an Israeli official downplayed the prospects for a full end to the war.
Saing Chhoeun was locked out of his Charlotte, N.C., home on Monday as law enforcement with high-powered rifles descended into his yard and garage, using a car as a shield as they were met with a shower of gunfire from the direction of his neighbor's house.
A source close to singer Britney Spears tells CNN that the pop star is 'home and safe' after she had a 'major fight' with her boyfriend on Wednesday night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.