Thuarfikar Alattiya
Windsor, ON / Nov. 19, 2004
At 5 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 19, Thuarfikar Alattiya began his shift. Shortly before 7 a.m. Veteran Taxi received a call from a home at 1314 Wellington avenue. The caller specifically asked for Alattiya, who arrived at the address at 7:04.
Alattiya, 41, had left his home town of Najaf in southern Iraq at the age of 19 to study civil engineering in Syria. He lived in Syria and the Gulf States until 2001 when he immigrated to Canada with his wife and two small children. At the time of his death he had three children aged seven, six and two.
The cab's global positioning system tracked Alattiya's erratic fifteen-minute journey -- south on Wellington avenue, east on Montrose street, north on Elm avenue, west on College avenue, north on Huron Church, east on Wyandotte street, south on Campbell avenue, east on College again and south on Elm, finally stopping on Montrose between Wellington and Elm.
A witness saw a man get out of the cab and enter a grey Chevrolet Cavalier. When he investigated the idling cab he found Alattiya in the back seat with his "head about cut off, from ear to ear." Defensive wounds on the victim's arms indicated a savage struggle.
Police determined that Alattiya's cell phone was missing. It had been turned off during the attack and police theorized that it was thrown from the cab near the University of Windsor. Campus police posted a picture of the cell phone on the university web site and asked for assistance in finding it.
Meanwhile, police quickly arrested a 53-year-old convenience store owner, his 19-year-old son, another man and a 17-year-old male. All were charged with first degree murder. The 53-year-old man had been involved in a bitter dispute with Alattiya over the purchase of a building for a mosque.
Both men had been leaders in Windsor's 3000-strong Iraqi Muslim community. Like them, most of the community's members are well-educated people who fled Iraq after 1991 following the first Gulf War. The death of Alattiya and the four arrests were a major shock.
Four days after Alattiya's death city police, acting on a tip from a witness, located a distinctive twin-bladed folding knife in a sewer near the murder scene. The two curved knife blades were separated by a handle with finger grooves. One blade had a smooth edge and the other a serrated edge. The knife was sent to Toronto for analysis.
Family members planned to fly Alattiya back to Iraq, but the Middle-Eastern airline refused to transport the body. Pending other arrangements the body was taken from the Jannette street mosque to a funeral home. About 20 taxis joined the procession.
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