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The terrifying day an Ontario judge and his court was held hostage in a bomb plot that was kept quiet
One of the wildest days in Ontario’s courts has been revealed by a short appeal decision about the day a judge and everyone in his courtroom were held hostage in a terrifying bomb plot that has largely remained a secret.
The shocking incident played out in cinematic style: twisting drama and high emotions, heart-pounding terror and a surprise happy ending when a clever judge and a heroic cop outwitted the desperate, inventive villain who was threatening mass mayhem.
Rather than movies and screaming headlines, however, there came only silence. Over the next seven years, the case — called a terrorist incident — quietly tiptoed through court with barely a public mention or disclosing the antagonist’s name.
After last week’s court hearing for the bomb plotter’s appeal, National Post has unlocked the untold details and can now reveal how the hostage drama and attempted kidnapping unfolded, how it was thwarted, and its continuing aftermath.
Shortly before 10:30 a.m. on Aug. 16, 2019, Ontario Superior Court Judge Frederick Myers called to order an acrimonious child-support hearing on the ninth floor of a downtown Toronto courthouse.
“How do we get to the bottom of this and get it settled,” Myers asked the couple who sat before him. The pair had already divorced, and the mother granted sole custody of their daughter, but they disagreed on child support and access. Along with the feuding parents and the judge, there were five court staff in the room.
“I’m afraid the settlement is not going to be the way you expect it to be,” the 37-year-old father in the case, Serkan Kesgin, replied.
“I’m leaving with my child from here today. It’s not a laptop. This is an explosive device. You can come check, sir,” he said, motioning to the computer bag he had with him in court, all while the remarkable exchange was being captured by the court’s transcription recorder.
“No one is leaving this room” he said. “If my heart rate goes below my resting rate, the device will explode. If my heart rate goes up, without my pressing the right button, device goes off. If my orientation changes too quickly without me pressing the button, right combination, device goes off. It’s a dead man’s switch.
“There is no way to stop this device.”
Kesgin gave his demands. His daughter was to be put on an airplane to Turkey within two hours. Authorities were to video call him to prove she was on the plane and one hour after she was in the air he was to be taken to the airport with his courtroom hostages and put on a second flight to Turkey, where he was born.
“Listen, sir,” Myers said, “you have to understand the police are going to be coming… You are holding people hostage in the courthouse? Really? You think this is going to work?”
“It doesn’t matter, sir,” Kesgin replied. “I died so many times you cannot imagine.”
Kesgin didn’t know it, but by then Myers had secretly pressed an emergency button under the judge’s bench and had dialled 911 on his phone. His iPhone was connected wirelessly to his hearing aid, and he could hear the emergency dispatcher’s questions and was trying to answer them as if he was speaking to Kesgin.
Myers said his staff should leave Courtroom 901 at 393 University Ave., a message also meant for the 911 dispatcher.
The man’s former wife, who sat terrified, saw that as her cue and suddenly bolted towards a door behind the judge’s bench and Kesgin chased her, allowing Toronto police court security officers who had arrived to rush in and grab him.
Myers ducked under his heavy wooden bench and braced for a blast.
“It’s going to go off,” Kesgin called to the officers.
“Well, if anybody’s dying, you’re dying too. Let’s go,” an officer can be heard saying as one officer held Kesgin and another pried his laptop bag out of one hand and a controller from the other, according to the officers’ notebooks from that day.
The court’s reporter later said she and a colleague were “like two chickens running out of the courtroom in a flight.” Staff were terrified and traumatized. Myers made sure he was the last to leave.
About 50 people from two floors of the courthouse were evacuated as police and fire crews arrived. A bomb sniffing dog searched the building and officers examined Kesgin’s bomb.
It was a fake, made of Play-Doh modelling clay, wax, wires, a 9-volt battery, circuit boards and a handheld device. Kesgin had also brought duct tape and zip ties, which can be used to restrain people.
Myers had been right. Kesgin’s bomb plot was not a good legal strategy. He was arrested and charged with possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose, intimidating the justice system, hostage taking, attempted kidnapping, and failure to comply with a court order.
Kesgin’s marriage had lasted barely a year and had dissolved four years before his courthouse drama.
Long before the hearing, he was struggling with the process. He had already been found in contempt of a restraining order, in breach of child support orders, and threatened with a harassment charge if he didn’t shape up. Despite having a job as a software engineer that paid $150,000 annually, he was $30,000 behind in child support, court records said.
After his courtroom attack, Kesgin pleaded guilty to the charges in 2021 at a hearing held over Zoom. He told court he understood there would be immigration ramifications to his guilty plea. “I am prepared to leave the country voluntarily,” he told the judge.
Judge Bruce Durno heard that Kesgin moved to Canada in 2010 and returned to Turkey after his marriage failed. He came back to Canada in 2018 on a work permit in a bid to regain parental rights. Kesgin presented letters from friends attesting to his intelligence, work ethic and friendly demeanour before his family turmoil. He had no criminal record.
The prosecutor, Marnie Goldenberg, called Kesgin’s crimes “an act of terrorism.”
“A free society cannot survive when activists or protestors, no matter how passionately they hold their beliefs, deliberately break the law in an effort to impose their will on others by dangerous and unlawful intimidation,” Goldenberg said.
She sought a sentence of between eight and 14 years in prison. Kesgin’s lawyer, Coulson Mills, asked for five years.
“I am frankly astonished how that device made it into the courthouse,” Mills said at one of his client’s hearings. Durno was told the courthouse didn’t have a screening device to detect such things at the time, which might be one reason authorities didn’t mention the incident. By the time Kesgin was sentenced, that had been fixed.
Mills described his client as “a man who has got many abilities, but unfortunately has been consumed, it appears, by the quest to have some contact with his daughter.”
At his sentencing hearing, victim impact statements from most of the seven he held hostage told of psychological damage from believing they might be blown to bits at work.
Mills then warned Durno his client wanted to deliver a two-hour speech. It’s an astonishing length for what is meant to be a simple allocution before sentencing. Most take a few minutes. As court discussed the prospect, Kesgin interjected with complaints of how he is treated in jail, claiming he was discriminated against and singled out for punishment.
“I have a particularly skeptical nature I guess I can attribute to my profession for the past 20 plus years, in which not only billion-dollar businesses but entire economies (and) human lives that depends on what I do, makes me a bit more cautious about things,” he said, according to a transcript of the hearing.
He said he had started an online inmate complaint service that automatically forwarded complaints to the Prime Minister, the United Nations and Amnesty International, which makes him a target of prison staff.
That, however, was not the speech he wished to make. On May 16, 2022, he had more to say. He started by apologizing to his victims.
“I said such things that make me want to throw my face on the floor and stomp on it. Things that even I find beyond outrageous today,” he said. To Myers, the judge he hijacked, he said: “The heroism you showed that day by ensuring your staff’s safety first and then remaining in ground zero to support the security officers is exemplary.
“I was a man who has finally giving in to a lifetime of tyranny, a lifetime of discrimination, a lifetime of injustice.” He said he was fearful his daughter would face the same discrimination because “I have made you a visible minority in this intolerant country. And not only a minority either, but the most unwanted kind, the Middle Eastern kind.”
Durno handed Kesgin a nine-year sentence.
“These offences have an impact on the administration of justice at large when offenders decide to terrorize a court,” Durno said. He considered the case terrorism, although it wasn’t charged as such, he said.
Since then, Kesgin has had a difficult time in prison.
In April 2025, he was denied parole. He appealed the Parole Board of Canada’s decision, and, in October, the parole appeals division also rejected his plea for early release.
Parole officials had several concerns. The board considered a letter he sent that contained “wide-ranging threats against a wide variety of people and threatened devastating consequences for the Canadian public,” according to parole records. He later said it was not a threat but a “wake-up call.”
A loud “outburst” from him at his parole hearing brought prison guards rushing to the room, according to parole records. Kesgin later said Turkish men are passionate and “raising our voices when we speak is not necessarily a sign of anger, but passion.” He railed to parole officials about “blatant and merciless discrimination” and blamed his situation on his former wife, incompetent police and mistaken court officials, according to parole records.
“The Board is satisfied that you are likely, if released, to commit an offence causing death or serious harm to another person before the expiration of your sentence,” the parole board told him.
Then, on June 2, came his court appeal of his nine-year sentence. Representing himself, Kesgin complained his sentence was disproportionate and his sentencing judge failed to apply the principle of restraint.
After hearing his arguments, the panel of three judges dismissed his appeal.
“We are not persuaded that the sentencing judge made any reversible error,” the appeal court said.
Court previously heard that when Kesgin is released, he will face immigration inadmissibility proceedings because of his convictions.
• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys
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