Chinese student murdered by Canadian, suspect held, safety in the West?
In China, the case seems set to deepen perceptions of foreign study as a risky prospect, following another murder in Canada last year and two widely publicised incidents in April: the shootings of two Chinese students in Los Angeles, and an overtly racist attack on two others on a Sydney train. It remains unclear whether Lin’s killing was racially motivated or simply part of a sustained campaign of increasingly extreme attention seeking. Montreal police would not speculate on the matter, but suspicions have taken root among the local Chinese community. From The Globe and Mail:
The murder of Mr. Lin has provoked widespread shock and anger in China, where many believe the crime was racially motivated. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa has warned citizens living or travelling in Canada to “strengthen their personal security” in the wake of the deadly attack.
Mr. Lin’s death is the second killing of a Chinese student in Canada in just over a year, following last April’s murder of York University student Liu Qian, part of which was watched on Skype by her boyfriend back in China.
[…] A makeshift memorial to Mr. Lin sprang up in downtown Montreal in front of the statue of Norman Bethune, the Canadian surgeon regarded as a hero in China. The foot of the statue was covered with bouquets along with a note in English, French and Chinese that summed up the sense of relief over Mr. Magnotta’s arrest: “We got that beast.”An earlier Globe and Mail report quoted the embassy’s warning, and outlined the case’s possible impact on Canadian universities’ ability to attract Chinese students.
“The Chinese Embassy in Canada reminds Chinese citizens traveling in Canada, as well as students and the staff of Chinese organizations in Canada, to improve their self-protection [and] awareness, and to strengthen their personal security,” reads the final paragraph of the Embassy’s Chinese-language statement on Mr. Lin’s murder, which called condemned the “heinous criminal act.” A similar warning was posted on the webpage of the Chinese consulate in Montreal.
[…] “The impact of the case will be very bad on Canada,” Meng Xiaochao, the boyfriend who witnessed the attack on Ms. Liu, said in an interview. “Last year when Liu Qian’s case happened, many parents said they were no longer willing to send their children to Canada. Now here comes this other case.”
More than 50,000 Chinese students currently live and study in Canada. Like all foreign students, they pay higher tuition than their Canadian-born classmates, making them highly sought-after by cash-strapped universities. Another 242,000 Chinese came to Canada as tourists last year, a number the travel industry had been hoping would increase by as much as one-fifth this year.An infographic at GOOD shows the most favoured destinations for Chinese students abroad, with Canada ranking third behind the US and UK. 85% of Chinese with net worths of more than one million US dollars reportedly plan to send their offspring to study overseas: those who have already done so include Bo Xilai, at least five of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, if one includes grandchildren, and noted crusader against foreign trash Yang Rui. The strong association of study abroad with wealth triggered a storm of resentment around the USC case in April. Some online reactions to Lin Jun’s murder displayed similar sentiments, though many others attacked such unsympathetic responses. Many expressed concern at the apparent dangers of journeys to the West, linking the Magnotta case to other bizarre and gruesome stories of recent weeks. From chinaSMACK
Porn star accused of killing gay ex-lover ate victim's body parts, claim police
Video footage of the suspected Montreal murderer Luka Rocco Magnotta show him eating the body parts of his alleged victim, police said yesterday.
Montreal Police Commander Ian Lafrenière said that while it could not be confirmed, his officers suspected Magnotta of eating parts of the lover he is accused of killing and dismembering.
German prosecutors further revealed yesterday that they intended to extradite Magnotta to Canada following his surprise arrest in Berlin on Monday.
The pornographic-film actor and model, 29, is wanted on suspicion of murdering and dismembering his male Chinese student lover and sending his victim's body parts to political parties in one of Canada's most gruesome killings.
Magnotta fled from Montreal to Berlin via Paris. He was arrested in an internet café in the German capital on Monday morning. Yesterday he appeared before a judge and was remanded in custody until further notice.
Prosecutors said they were awaiting a request from Montreal Police for his extradition. A spokesman said the process could take "several days".
Canadian police have confiscated a film of a man killing his victim with an ice pick. The video is thought to show Magnotta murdering his 33-year-old lover, Jun Lin. His motive is said to have been jealousy.
The killer is suspected of dismembering his victim's body and posting parts of the corpse to Canada's Conservative and Liberal parties.
Magnotta is nicknamed "psycho killer" because the soundtrack to the video allegedly showing the murder carried excerpts from the film American Psycho.
Canadian porn actor who killed man and mailed body parts arrested
Berlin: A Canadian porn actor suspected of murdering and dismembering a Chinese student and mailing his body parts to Canada's top political parties was reading about himself on the internet when he was arrested on Monday at a cafe in Berlin.
Canadian investigators say 29-year-old Luka Magnotta's obsessions led him to post internet videos of his killing kittens, then a man, and finally to his arrest at the cafe where he had spent two hours reading media coverage of himself.
An international manhunt set off by a case of internet gruesomeness that captured global attention ended quietly in the working-class Neukoelln district of the German capital when a cafe employee recognised Magnotta from a newspaper photo and flagged down a police car.
Confronted by seven officers, "He tried at first giving fake names but in the end he just said: 'You got me’," said police spokesman Guido Busch. "He didn't resist."
Magnotta is wanted by Canadian authorities on suspicion of killing Jun Lin, a 33-year-old man he dated, in Canada, and mailing his body parts to two of Canada's top political parties before fleeing to Europe.
They say Magnotta filmed the murder of the Chinese student in his Montreal studio apartment and posted it online. The video shows a man with an ice pick stabbing another naked, bound male. He also dismembers the corpse and performs sexual acts with it in what police called a horrifying video.
The warning signs apparently were already there. For nearly two years animal activists had been looking for a man who tortured and killed cats and posted videos of his cruelty online. Since Lin's murder, Montreal police have released a photo from the video which they say is of Magnotta.
In 2005, Magnotta was accused of sexually assaulting a woman, but the charges were dropped, the lawyer who represented him at the time said.
Magnotta is believed to have fled to France on May 26, based on evidence police found at his apartment and a blog he once posted about disappearing.
In Germany, surveillance camera footage of the internet cafe, obtained by the Associated Press, showed Magnotta casually walking in to the shop at noon local time, wearing jeans, a green hoodie sweater and sunglasses.
He briefly spoke to the internet cafe's desk person, then walked off to his assigned computer with the number 25 where he would later be spotted reading the news about his case.
About two hours later, seven German police officers are seen walking into the shop, without any haste or arms.
On the camera footage, three police officers are seen accompanying the handcuffed Magnotta a couple of minutes after they first entered the cafe. Magnotta calmly walks alongside them, again wearing sunglasses.
In Germany, police spokeswoman Kerstin Ziesmer said Magnotta is being questioned, and will be brought before a judge behind closed doors.
"He says he is the wanted person," she added, while cautioning that his identity must still be independently confirmed by German authorities.
Canada, like Europe, has no death penalty, making extradition more likely. Quebec bureau of prosecutions spokesman Rene Verret said it could still take a long time to get him back to Canada, but he said if Magnotta doesn't contest the order he could be returned within a couple of weeks.
The case's full horror emerged when a package containing a severed foot was opened at the ruling Conservative Party headquarters on May 29. That same day a hand was discovered at a postal facility, addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada. And a torso was found in a suitcase on a garbage dump in Montreal, outside Magnotta's apartment building. Police in masks combed through the blood-soaked Montreal studio apartment last Wednesday.
As they unraveled his background, police discovered that Luka Magnotta changed his name from Eric Clinton Newman in 2006 and that he was born in Scarborough, Ontario. He is also known as Vladimir Romanov.
His mother, Anna Yourkin in Peterbourgh, Ontario, said she had no comment, apologised and hung up the phone.
Toronto lawyer Peter Scully said he represented Magnotta in a fraud case in 2004 and a sexual assault case in 2005.
He said Magnotta was charged with a dozen counts of fraud and impersonation for using a woman's credit card to buy about $17,000 worth of goods, including a television, DVD player and several cellphones. He said he pleaded guilty to four fraud-related charges after serving 16 days in pre-trial custody. He received a nine-month conditional sentence and a year of probation.
Scully said Magnotta was charged with sexually assaulting a woman in 2005, but the prosecution decided to withdraw the charges. The woman's father became so irate and threatening that Scully said he wrote a letter to police and the prosecutor, telling them about it.
Scully remembered Magnotta as soft spoken and polite.
"I've had lots of creepy characters and Eric did not stand out as one of them," he said. Scully refers to his client by his previous name, Eric Newman.
But Nina Arsenault, a Toronto transsexual who said she had a relationship with Magnotta over a decade ago, described him as a drug user with a temper, who sometimes turned his anger on himself, hitting himself on the head, and other parts of his body.
While Magnotta described himself in an online video interview with a site called "Naked News" as a stripper and male escort, Lin, who was from Wuhan, China, was registered as an undergraduate in the engineering department and computer science at Concordia University in Montreal. Police have confirmed Magnotta is a porn actor and that he and Jun had a relationship.
Zoya De Frias Lakhany, 21, a fellow Concordia student in some of Lin's classes, said he was an excellent student who was shy and humble. She said she cried all weekend.
"He was happy here, he would take pictures of the snow and post them," she recalled. "He was sweet, never complained and smiled all the time."
Montreal Police Cmdr Ian Lafreniere said investigators are extremely relieved and pleased about the arrest.
"We said from the beginning that the web has been used to glorify himself and we believe the web brought him down," said Lafreniere. "He was recognised because his photo was everywhere."
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Apr 25, 2012
