Killing of mosque caretaker in Toronto (Guilherme von Neutegem case)

On the evening of 12 September 2020, Mohamed-Aslim Zafis, a 58-year-old volunteer caretaker, was stabbed in the neck while sitting outside the front doors of the International Muslims Organization (IMO) mosque at 65 Rexdale Boulevard in the Rexdale area of Toronto. Zafis was controlling the number of people entering the building to comply with COVID-19 public health rules. According to Global News, Toronto Police homicide investigators said there was no apparent motive and no known relationship between the attacker and the victim.

On 18 September 2020 police arrested Guilherme "William" Von Neutegem, 34, and charged him with first-degree murder. As reported by Global News, investigators noted similarities to the death of Rampreet (Peter) Singh, 39, days earlier on 7 September, but declined to formally connect the two cases. Soon after the arrest, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network reported that social media accounts attributed to Von Neutegem promoted the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), an occult neo-Nazi milieu, and included recordings of satanic chants and imagery showing a nine-pointed O9A symbol on a home altar.

On 30 March 2023 the case ended without a criminal conviction. Global News reported that the court found Von Neutegem not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder, accepting two forensic psychiatrists who concluded he was suffering untreated schizophrenia at the time and did not appreciate the moral wrongfulness of his actions. The psychiatrists found no evidence of an Islamophobic motive. His case is now overseen by the Ontario Review Board.

This was a domestic killing, not Russian or other state-directed hybrid warfare. The reported ties to the Order of Nine Angles, an occult neo-Nazi current, are documented by extremism researchers but were never tested as a legal motive: the court found the attacker not criminally responsible due to schizophrenia, and psychiatrists found no Islamophobic intent. The extremist association should therefore be treated as reported and alleged, not as a judicially established cause. It is included here because the incident fed wider concern about far-right and occult radicalization in Canada.