Canadian police arrested a 24-year-old Québécois man suspected of making a video where he threatened to kill an Arab every week in the French-speaking province, according to CBC News.
In the video, which was posted to YouTube but has since been removed, a man wearing a Joker-like mask holds an airsoft pistol while making the threats. Canadian news agencies haven't released the man's name, but report he was arrested Tuesday night and expected to make a court appearance Wednesday in Montreal.
"This attitude has to be condemned," Interim Quebec Security Minister Pierre Moreau told CBC. "Under the Criminal Code, such threats can carry a sentence of five years in prison."
Authorities told reporters an airsoft gun was confiscated when the suspect was arrested.
The threat was made after violent attacks on Canadian Muslims in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people, the Toronto Sun reports. A Muslim woman was attacked near an elementary school in Toronto in what police called a crime motivated by hate, and a mosque was set on fire in Ontario two days earlier.
The "Joker" trope has surfaced a number of times associated with violence. Aurora theater shooter James Holmes identified as the Joker. Homes killed 12 people in the 2012 shooting. Jerad and Amanda Miller, who killed three people in a mass shooting in Las Vegas, donned Joker makeup in photographs before the 2014 killing spree. The two were killed in a shoot-out with authorities.
A shorter copy of the video can be seen, as posted to YouTube, here:
