Mother of former UW student who was charged in campus poster spree says her son is sick, not a women-hater

The mother of a former University of Waterloo student charged in connection with a series of bizarre posters and emails distributed on campus told Imprint her son didn’t mean to frighten anyone.

“He’s not a scary person… If we can get him to a facility where they can offer him proper treatment and medication, I think he’ll get better,” said Alma Nathoo while taking a coffee break during court proceedings for her son, 34-year-old Zamir Nathoo.

Imprint caught up with Alma and her daughter, Zamir Nathoo’s sister, who requested anonymity, on Tuesday at a Tim Horton’s in downtown Kitchener, across the street from the provincial court house where Nathoo’s bail hearing was set to take place.

The hearing was ultimately delayed because Nathoo’s duty council had a scheduling conflict. Nathoo did not appear in court on Tuesday, and his status was unknown as of publication time.

Campus police arrested Nathoo at the Davis Centre Library on Sunday night, according to press release issued by Waterloo Regional Police.

He was charged with one count each of mischief, personation and criminal harassment. None of the charges have been proven in court.

UW police director Dan Anderson expressed relief that the four-month investigation had finally resulted in an arrest, noting that both campus and regional police had been working hard to make a break in the high-profile case.

He declined to say what led police to Nathoo, saying only that “we’ve been following this suspect for some time now.”

According to Anderson, the mischief charge against Nathoo can be traced back to the Federation of Students elections in February, when female candidates had their campaign advertisements covered with posters containing disparaging remarks about women, including one that called physicist Marie Curie “mother of the atomic bomb.”

The personation charge stemmed from a mass email that was sent under the name of the University of Waterloo’s president, Feridun Hamdullahpur, while the criminal harassment charge was the result of the “fear” created by the suspect’s mass emails, Anderson added.

“We had a number of females on campus who were continually on the recipient list and were quite fearful that their safety was in jeopardy,” he explained.

The posters, which were labelled “The Truth,” were also sent to individuals at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Balsillie School of Business.

Following the announcement of the arrest, the University of Waterloo confirmed that Nathoo was enrolled at the school more than a decade ago.

Ellen Réthoré, UW associate vice president of communications and public affairs, said Zamir was an engineering student until 1995, but “did not complete his degree.”

Asked to shed some light on the events leading up to Nathoo’s arrest, Alma, who settled in Kitchener with her family after immigrating from Tanzania in the 1990s, said she suspected her son might be mentally ill and felt badly that she didn’t catch the warning signs sooner.

She said she has spent much of her time over the past several months caring for her ailing brother, who recently died of cancer.

“I didn’t know what was going on until he was arrested,” said Alma, who used to work at a group therapy home in Kitchener, but is now retired.

She said she suspected the catalyst for her son’s behaviour wasn’t a hatred of women, but rather his inability to find work after graduating from the aerospace engineering program at Carleton University in 2000.

“After ten years of trying to find work, he became depressed and he just went down and down and down,” Alma said.

She added that after consulting with the crown attorney, she trusted her son would not face jail time but would instead be transferred to a mental health facility.

Nathoo’s completion of a degree at Carleton could not be verified because provincial and federal privacy laws prevent the disclosure of such information without permission from the student in question.

A website for “Let X=X,” a radio program at Carleton community radio station CKCU, mentions a Zamir Nathoo as a former member of the CKCU Science Collective. However, CKCU station manager Matthew Crosier said “Let X=X” had been off the air for several years and that he’d never heard of Nathoo.

The website listed Nathoo’s role as “resident pilot and aerospace engineer, hosting, wild ideas and technician.”

The unusual emails, which were sent out about once a week since February, started out by targeting women in authority, but soon expanded to include criticism of religious figures, Canadian politicians and the British Empire.

They culminated in the release last Thursday of a 16-page manifesto the author called “the final draft of heaven’s overthrow order against your nation.”

The well-written but rambling text blamed Jews, the English monarchy and money for the world’s ills. It also claimed that “[a] woman has no place in the workforce for any reason.”

In the foreword, the author purported to be a messianic figure that would condemn the wicked and bring about the end of the world.

“Most of you will not understand me but this does not mean that I cannot help you,” read the document, which was sent by email to individuals attending universities across the province. “I have been sent to you because the other men here lack the virtue necessary to meet your needs. I am the Creator of the Universe hiding inside the body of a human being.”

-editor@imprint.uwaterloo.ca