Montreal police are investigating after a letter was sent to media outlets Wednesday threatening to set off bombs targeting Muslim students in at least three Concordia University buildings.
Police arrived at the university around 10 a.m. The Hall, EV, and GM buildings were evacuated. They have found no sign of explosives, police spokesperson Benoît Besselle said.
Both buildings were evacuated, and service at the Guy-Concordia métro station was briefly interrupted. The evacuation was ordered at 11:30 a.m., about two hours after the threat was received.
The letter, which was sent to the Montreal Gazette as well as several other media outlets, suggests bombs will be set off at two buildings this week – the Hall building on de Maisonneuve Blvd. and the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts building on Ste-Catherine St.
It said it was a warning to Muslim students. It complained about Friday prayers, men washing their feet in sinks and men walking in bare feet or flip flops on the seventh floor of the university’s Hall building. It went on to say that bombs would be detonated every day from March 1 to March 3 unless Concordia bans what the letter referred to as Muslim activities.
The letter says that a member of the group calling itself the Council of Conservative Citizens of Canada reported her concern about “Friday prayers and the often anti-Christian and anti-Jewish speeches” to the Concordia Student Union, which “didn’t do anything” about it.
The CSU’s general coordinator, Lucinda Marshall-Kiparissis, said Wednesday that the CSU learned that what the letter was referencing was a recent complaint made to one of its receptionists.
“We are currently trying to get more information,” Marshall-Kiparissis said. “But the CSU will never compromise on the existence of prayer spaces for our Muslim students, and if the complaint was Islamophobic in nature our receptionists are not obliged to entertain it.”
McGill University campus radio station CKUT also received the letter Wednesday morning. In an email CKUT received, the group said it will “spread our fight to McGill too.”
McGill spokesperson Carole Graveline said the university is aware of the situation and campus security has been warned about the email CKUT received.
Standing in a throng of students outside one of the evacuated buildings, Concordia spokesperson Chris Mota said the university is taking the threat seriously but has no evidence it is real.
She said police asked for the evacuation so they could go through the building and assess the threat. Thousands of students, faculty and other staff poured out of the building in an orderly fashion.
Between Monday and Thursday, one of the buildings is hosting an Islamic Awareness Week.
The university ordered the evacuation of the two buildings around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. Classes have been cancelled in those two buildings.