WARNING: This story contains disturbing details. Discretion is advised.
A man has been sentenced following a horrifying attack on a Surrey transit bus in 2023.
Abdul Aziz Kawam, 30, assaulted a man with a knife at a bus stop near Fraser Highway and 156th Street before boarding a bus and slashing another passenger in the throat on April 1, 2023. Both men survived.
On Thursday Kawam was sentenced to 16 years and eight months in prison.
With credit for time spent in custody since April 2023, he has just over 11 years left to serve.
Crown had asked for 20 years in the case, while the defence was suggesting seven.
On April 1, 2023, security video obtained by Global News showed Kawam walking onto the bus, followed a few seconds later by his victim, whose identity is protected by a publication ban.
Both stood near the rear exit doors of the bus and rode together in silence for approximately three minutes, not speaking or interacting.
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Kawam then suddenly pulled out a large knife and slashed at the victim’s neck three times, intending to kill him, according to the admissions submitted at trial.
As bus passengers are heard screaming in the video, the victim used his body to push Kawam out of the bus.
“He was bleeding out of his neck and he still managed to throw his attacker off the bus,” said Oren Bick, general counsel with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.
The knife nicked the victim’s vocal cords and missed his main artery by a millimetre, his brother-in-law, who cannot be identified as per the publication ban, told Global News days after the attack.
Crown Prosecutor, Sharon Steele, said on Thursday that this victim “likely saved the lives of other people on that bus with his ability to defend himself so quickly and stay calm and collected and get Mr. Kawam off the bus and it’s likely a credit to him that no one else was injured.”
Some fifteen minutes earlier on April 1, Kawam had used the same knife to attack his first victim across the street.
“Mr. Kawam initially approached him and asked are you Muslim?,” Bick told Global News in an interview.
When the man replied “No,” Kawam went back to the bus stop, prayed for approximately two minutes, and then returned, taking the large knife out of his jacket and attacking the victim, aiming a slashing motion at his neck without making contact.
The victim, who pushed Kawam away and ran, described the blade as being approximately 10 inches, according to the admissions.
“Kawam chased him for some distance, knife still in hand, but (the victim) was ultimately able to escape,” stated the admissions, and was able to call 911 from a gas station nearby.
“This wasn’t a who done it, this was a why did he do it,” said Bick. “There was really no disputing what happened.”
On June 30, 2025, Kawam was convicted of attempted murder and assault with a weapon for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in association with a terrorist group: the Islamic State.
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