A man who proclaimed himself a Nazi and verbally assaulted a Calgary woman in a July Facebook video recorded near Winnipeg was identified by Global News.
Nick Wadien spoke to Global News over the phone Thursday and confirmed that he was the man from the video taken just after Canada Day near Seven Sisters Falls, roughly 100 kilometres east of Winnipeg.
READ MORE: ‘I’m a Nazi’: Calgary woman verbally, racially attacked by man near Winnipeg
Kaniz Fatima, a teacher from Calgary, was visiting family in Manitoba when the video was taken. Fatima said she and her family wanted to explore the province but got lost and asked two men for directions.
WATCH: A Calgary woman is the victim of a racist attack in Manitoba. As Reid Fiest reports, there are calls for the man who called himself a Nazi to face charges.
One of the men, identified as Wadien, responded by giving Fatima and her family the finger while shouting racial obscenities and declaring that he was a Nazi.
“I’m a f— Nazi b—!” he can be heard shouting. “Take your head towel off in this country.”
When asked over the phone Thursday, Wadien said he isn’t a Nazi, and explained, “I got mad.”
“The ‘turbaners’ wouldn’t leave me alone so I got mad. I didn’t want to talk to them. That’s it.”
“They wanted to know where they were. I told them and I told them to use Google,” he said. “They kept f— talking, like I don’t want to talk to you.”
LISTEN: As Global’s Zahra Premji speaks to Nick Wadien.
Fatima said one of her family members started to record the video after Wadien began shouting at them.
About halfway through the video, two women can be seen approaching from the background.
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“As we were walking back to our vehicle, I heard a woman screaming at a man and I was kind of taken back,” Alysha Goertzen spoke to Global News in Edmonton. She’s originally from Manitoba and was showing her friend around the province when they came across the noisy confrontation.
“As I approached, I could hear him screaming racial slurs at her, degrading her. She was a little spitfire herself, standing up for herself.”
“Excuse me sir, what’s your problem? They have just as much right to be here as you do,” Goertzen can be heard saying in the video. “You don’t even have to explain yourself because you’re just as much Canadian as he is.”
WATCH: Kaniz Fatima responds after hearing a Global News interview with Nick Wadien, the man accused of a racist tirade against the Calgary teacher.
Goertzen said she was shocked by the incident.
“That’s not what being Canadian is.”
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David Matas, a human rights lawyer in Winnipeg, said Wadien could be facing a number of charges.
“This is more than just an expression of racial hatred, the very identification of a person as a Nazi is an identification of a person who’s willing to use violence, even murder, to get his way,” Matas said.
Fatima is in the process of reporting the incident to RCMP. The Mounties said once that happens, they will start an investigation.
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