Nathaniel Veltman appeared for a few minutes via video conference from prison before a Canadian judge on Thursday.
The twenty-year-old is accused of deliberately mowing down and killing four members of a Muslim family on Sunday in Canada.
The first elements of his personality and his arrest began to emerge.
Dressed in an orange t-shirt, wearing a mask, short hair, he simply declined his identity and answered a few questions about his defense.
A new hearing is scheduled for Monday.
No record or affiliation with an extremist organization
The young man, who has no criminal record or known affiliation with an extremist organization, was charged earlier this week with four counts of premeditated murder and one attempted murder.
If found guilty, he faces life imprisonment.
The police did not rule out laying other charges of a "terrorist" nature against the suspect following this tragedy which shocked Canada.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several leaders of the Muslim community have denounced a "terrorist attack".
Public Safety Minister Bill Blair told CBC on Thursday that "the police are investigating as a terrorist act".
He laughed when he was arrested
Sunday night in London, 200 km southwest of Toronto, Veltman had deliberately run into the Afzaal family with his pickup, an act "premeditated and planned, motivated by hatred", according to police. Five members of this family had been mowed down while waiting to cross at a crossroads. Four of them were killed - a couple, their daughter and her grandmother - and a seriously injured 9-year-old survived.
The perpetrator was arrested seven kilometers away in front of a shopping center, where a taxi driver came face to face with him, according to the latter's employer quoted by Canadian media.
The suspect parked his pickup behind the car of the taxi driver, himself a Muslim.
“He shouted at our colleague to call the police because he had killed someone,” said company president Hasan Savehilaghi.
The suspect was wearing a swastika t-shirt, a bulletproof vest and a military helmet, and he was laughing during his arrest, according to the driver quoted by his boss.
Treated for mental disorders
Veltman was described in 2016 as angry and treated for mental disorder, in court documents dating back to his parents' divorce and cited by Canadian media.
He and his twin sister are the eldest in a family of six, now between 10 and 20 years old.
On Thursday, his father Mark Veltman, reacting for the first time, expressed his "horror".
"I was shocked and horrified at the highest point to learn of the unspeakable crime committed last weekend," he said in a statement to several media.
“No word will suffice to express my immense grief for the victims of this senseless act.
"
Emotion and anger
The attack claimed the lives of three generations of the Afzaal family, originally from Pakistan and living in Canada since 2007: Madiha, 44, a doctoral student in the environmental field, her husband Salman, a 46-year-old physiotherapist, their daughter Yumna, 15, and her grandmother Talat, 74. The couple's son, Fayez, was seriously injured but his life is not in danger. Still hospitalized, the young orphan knows that his family has been wiped out, CBC reported on Thursday.
The tragedy provoked emotion and anger, and sparked a vast outpouring of solidarity across the country.
On Tuesday evening, several thousand people attended an outdoor funeral vigil in London in tribute to the victims, in the presence of many political leaders including Justin Trudeau.
The people of London have also been invited to join in the funeral for the victims, which will be celebrated and televised on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. local (5:30 p.m. GMT), according to the funeral home.
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