The Montreal Police Department will not press charges against the McGill University student who threatened to shoot everyone in a classroom via his Twitter page.
Haaris Khan wrote a series of threatening tweets while at a screening of “Indoctrinate U,” a documentary about political correctness in American higher education, on March 8.
“I want to shoot everyone in this room,” he wrote. “I should have brought an M16.”
According to the McGill Tribune, approximately 20 students were in the room during the time of Khan’s tweets. At 1:14 p.m. the next day, Khan tweeted, “The jihad begins today.”
The Montreal Police Department investigated Khan but did not find grounds for charges, Media Relations Agent Raphael Bergeron said.
“There was no intent,” Bergeron said. “It was just something that was improper the way he said it on Twitter. You need to have an intent (to press charges).”
In a statement released last week, McGill University said they do not release information regarding a student’s disciplinary record.
Although the university did not notify students of Khan’s threatening tweets, McGill said it would notify students if there were to be what they deemed a serious threat.
“If we feel any need to warn members of our community about a potential threat, we do so promptly,” the statement said.
The director of “Indoctrinate U,” Evan Maloney said he believes there’s some irony in the situation.
“I could have predicted it,” Maloney said. “There have been so many incidents where pretty extreme things happened and there’s no punishment. There are plenty of times students who are expressing political views are punished.”
In his tweets, Khan referred to the screening as “Zionist.” Maloney said his film does not show favor to any religious group.
“It doesn’t really deal with that topic much at all, it deals primarily with political speech,” Maloney said. “We had a segment on (Moammar) Gadhafi in the film, maybe that’s what he’s reacting to. That was the context in which Middle Eastern politics really came up.”
In the March 21 issue of The McGill Tribune, Khan wrote a letter labeled “An Apology” addressed to university members.
“I apologize to those who were at the screening of Indoctrinate U and any other people who were offended or felt threatened by my tweets,” Khan said. “It was never my intention to be a divisive or antagonistic figure at McGill. My goal now is to channel that into a more responsible discourse.”
Amanda Seitz is the special reports editor for the Miami Student. She is a member of the Student Free Press Association.
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