MONTREAL - A man serving a 7-year prison term for a series of hates crimes, including the 2006 firebombing of a Jewish school for children, may spend the rest of his sentence behind bars after proving to be a problem since his release to a halfway house earlier this year.
Omar Bulphred, 26, renounced his right to a hearing the National Parole Board Thursday morning and subsequently saw his statutory release revoked. Parole board member Renaud Dutil said Bulphred “indicated confidential reasons” as his explanation for deciding to skip the hearing just ten minutes before it was scheduled to take place at the Leclerc Institution, a penitentiary in Laval. Dutil and his colleague Michel Lafrenière conducted a brief hearing despite Bulphred’s absence.
When Bulphred was sentenced, on Feb. 12, 2009, he had 40 months left to serve. He pleaded guilty to uttering threats, setting a fire at the Skver-Toldos Orthodox Jewish Boys School in Outremont, in September 2006, and to trying to set fire to propane tanks he placed near the Snowdon YM-YWHA in April 2007. The fire at the school caused little damage and the propane tanks failed to explode. No one was injured in either fire but some parents at the school withdrew their children out of concerns for their safety.
The Montreal police investigated the fires and learned they were set by Bulphred, originally from Georgia, and an accomplice, Azim Ibragimov, 28, a non-practising Muslim from Kirkland. The police found letters in which both men declared jihad and demanded the liberation of their “brothers,” a group of 18 men who had just been arrested on terrorism charges in Toronto.
Bulphred was denied parole twice but in May he reached his statutory release date, the two-thirds mark of his sentence. Because he had not been released previously, the parole board could only attach conditions to his release. He was ordered to spend what remained of his sentence in a halfway house and to follow psychological counselling. The decision to impose the conditions was based, in part, on how Bulphred continued to downplay the violent nature of his crimes and felt his sentence was too severe.
Weeks later, his statutory release was suspended on May 24 after he threatened someone with a knife. In August, a hearing was cancelled because the parole board received information it couldn’t have verified in time. On Thursday, a parole officer informed Dutil and Lafrenière that the information involved an allegation that Bulphred “could compromise the safety of a (Correctional Service Canada) employee” if he were returned to a halfway house. The parole officer did not elaborate but Bulphred has a history of threatening or intimidating staff at Leclerc. He was expelled from school and a work program because of his attitude in the past.
Bulphred’s new statutory release date has been set for Feb. 14, 2012 but Dutil expressed doubt on whether a hearing will be held at that point, considering Bulphred’s renunciation of the hearing on Thursday. His sentence expires in June 2012
In 2010, Correctional Service Canada told the board they were considering a recommendation that Bulphred serve his entire sentence behind bars but, in April, they instead recommended he reside at a halfway house.
Bulphred immigrated from Georgia to Canada in 1996, when he was 10. At the time he was sentenced in 2009, Bulphred’s lawyer said his father lived in Algeria and that his mother, who spoke neither French nor English, was distant from her son.
While Bulphred was being investigated for the fires, the Montreal police learned he also planned to kidnap and then kill a person by setting a car on fire.
In 2009, while Bulphred was inside a penitentiary, guards found a pile of written material describing murders, dismemberment and mass shootings at a school. He later claimed the material was part of a novel he planned to write.
Experts who later examined Bulphred told the parole board they didn’t know what to make of his writings. They couldn’t tell if they were fictional fantasies or something more sinister.
On Nov. 18, 2008, Ibragimov received a 4-year prison term, followed by three years of probation, for his role in the fires. He had ten months left to serve on the prison term when the sentence was rendered.
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