A Gatineau man has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death three years ago of 36-year-old Little Burgundy resident Tricia Boisvert and to carrying out an attempt to hide her body that involved one mistake after another. 

“My crazy friend is coming to stay with me,” Tricia Boisvert told another friend.

On Friday, Philippe Steele-Morin, 34, pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter and to interfering and committing an indignity to a dead body in January 2014. He was originally charged with first-degree murder in the slaying but, according to a joint statement of facts read into the court record during a hearing at the Montreal courthouse before Superior Court Justice Pierre Labrie, there was no premeditation. 

Sometime after his arrest in the homicide, Steele-Morin, represented by defence lawyer Alan Guttman, told investigators he believes he killed Boisvert by accident during a night where both had consumed a lot of alcohol and she used MDMA, a drug also known as ecstasy. 

“The toxicology report confirms that the victim had a high level of MDMA in her blood stream. The toxicologist also found that the victim had a blood alcohol level of 178 mg/100 ml at the time of her death,” prosecutor Delphine Mauger said as she finished reading from the statement of facts. 

Steele-Morin conceded that on Jan. 16, 2014, he left Ottawa to hide from the police because he was the subject of several bench warrants. He and Boisvert had been friends for eight years and he contacted her looking for a place to hide. 

“He often turned turned to her for support when he fell in trouble. She also supplied him with drugs for trafficking purposes,” Auger said, reading from the document. 

Boisvert sent a Facebook message to a friend expressing concern over Steele-Morin’s arrival to her Little Burgundy apartment. She wrote: “(M)y crazy friend is coming to stay with me for a bit. F–k. I think he got himself into some serious s–t.” 

Steele-Morin showed up at Boisvert’s home four hours after the message was sent. He was with a male friend who stayed a while and then left. Steele-Morin later told police he and Boisvert finished a bottle of vodka together and she took MDMA. They then went out to a bar where he drank seven or eight glasses and shared a pitcher of beer with Boisvert. 

Philippe Steele-Morin.

According to the statement of facts: “They walked back to the victim’s apartment, both heavily intoxicated. Once inside, Mr. Steele-Morin smoked a last cigarette and passed out on the couch. At some point during the night, the victim began grabbing the accused’s pants. He recalls reflexively pushing her away and fell right back to sleep. Later on, he awakened to find the victim on top of him. He vaguely remembers hitting the victim, including a punch and thrusting her off him. He was heavily intoxicated and has only partial recollection of what happened. He passed out again.”

Steele-Morin told investigators that when he woke up, he found Boivert’s body lying on the floor of her apartment. A forensic pathologist determined she died of strangulation and that “it is possible that the victim died after minimally 15 seconds of being strangulated due to a series of reflex reactions that would lead the heart to stop beating.”

A series of errors

The document read into the court record also lists a series of errors Steele-Morin made while he and two friends tried to hide Boisvert’s body over the course of three days.

For starters, he locked himself out of her apartment after packing his personal belongings inside a friend’s car. He cut his hand when he had to break a window to get back inside and left DNA on a door. He originally left the body in Hudson, behind a commercial building near Highway 40. But he and a different friend, James Boucher, 35, returned to retrieve the body, on Jan. 19, 2014, and hid it in a wooded area in Quyon, on property owned by Boucher’s family. After hiding the body, both men returned to the truck they had rented but learned it was stuck in snow. They asked several neighbours for help and called for a tow truck before they could leave the area. Steele-Morin went into hiding but was arrested by Ottawa police on March 10, 2014.  

Labrie will hear sentence arguments over the course of two days in February before determining a sentence for Steele-Morin. Mauger said at least five people who knew Boisvert have said they plan to testify during the sentence hearing. 

On Sept. 10, 2015, Boucher pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder and interfering with a dead body. He was sentenced to an overall prison term of three years. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

Related

• From the archives: Friends gather to honour life of Tricia Boisvert

Quebec Court Judge Yves Paradis has delayed his decision on sentencing for a Canada Revenue Agency auditor convicted of soliciting and accepting a bribe from a Plateau Mont-Royal restaurant. 

Elias Kawkab, 55, was scheduled to be sentenced Friday afternoon at the Montreal courthouse. He is facing the possibility of a 15-month prison term for having negotiated a $100,000 bribe from the manager and the owners of the Arahova restaurant on St-Viateur St. W. in 2008. He later returned half the bribe money after the owners learned other Montreal-area restaurants had been extorted for bribes by other CRA auditors. 

Instead of delivering his decision on Friday, Paradis pushed back the sentence date to March 26. In June, Kawkab pleaded guilty to committing a fraud on the government and breach of trust. 

Related

• Former Canada Revenue Agency auditor to be sentenced for accepting bribe

The jury hearing the trial of a young couple facing terrorism charges at the Montreal courthouse will be sequestered next week.

Closing arguments in the lengthy trial came to an end on Friday after defence lawyer Charles Benmouyal argued the Crown had failed to prove the couple, Sabrine Djermane, 21, and El Mahdi Jamali, 20, were doing anything more than planning to get married, against the wishes of their parents, and were preparing to travel to Greece together.

Superior Court Justice Marc David then told the jury to be ready for the next step in the trial that began in mid-September. He said he plans to deliver his instructions to the jury on Wednesday, or Thursday at the latest. The jury will be sequestered after David completes his instructions.

The couple are charged with attempting to leave Canada with the goal of committing a crime in another country (to join the terrorist group ISIL in Syria), possession of explosive materials and committing a criminal act for the benefit of, or under the direction of, a terrorist group by having an explosive substance under their control.

At the start of the trial, federal prosecutor Lyne Décarie told the jury that investigators found a video, on a computer seized from the couple, on which John Maguire, a Canadian who fought for ISIL, called on fellow Canadians to either travel to Syria or commit terrorist acts at home. Décarie alleged that the couple “answered that call” by preparing to leave for Syria early in May 2015 and by allegedly having taken steps toward preparing a pressure cooker bomb.

Benmouyal referred to Décarie’s reference to Maguire often in his closing arguments. He said the Crown had failed to prove the couple were interested in taking part in any terrorist activity and that the many videos and news articles related to ISIL found on the couple’s computers showed they, like many Muslims around the world, were concerned about what was happening in Syria in 2015.

“Their common project was to get an apartment, have a wedding and travel (to Greece),” Benmouyal said.

He highlighted text messages the couple sent to each other, days before they were arrested, and questioned whether they sounded like something jihadists would write to each other. In one text message Jamali sent to Djermane he wrote that “life is beautiful” and that their religion doesn’t prevent them from enjoying it.

The defence attorney conceded the couple’s behaviour changed after two members of an Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) met with Djermane days before the couple were arrested. The INSET detectives were investigating concerns, expressed by some of Djermane’s relatives, that she was heading to Syria like some of her fellow classmates at Collège de Maisonneuve had done weeks before.

The INSET members pretended to be investigating the students who had left when they first met with Djermane. Evidence revealed the couple correctly assumed they were actually under investigation and that they tried to erase evidence they had downloaded material that could potentially prove they were interested in ISIL.

“I submit, her behaviour is not that of a person who wanted to take part in jihad but that it is the behaviour of a person who figured she is being investigated,” Benmouyal said. “If you are being investigated by (INSET) and you’ve been reading articles on ISIL you are going to try to erase all traces of that research.”

pcherry@postmedia.com

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• 'They answered that call': Prosecutor lays out timeline as couple's terror trial starts

A man who firebombed a Jewish school in Outremont more than a decade ago was back behind bars last week on charges alleging he was planning to kill his father and a prostitute.

Omar Bulphred, 32, was arrested early last week and charged on Monday with breaking and entering. He was detained throughout the week and, on Friday, an additional set of charges were filed at the Montreal courthouse, alleging that on Dec. 2, he broke into a home in an apartment building just north of the Place Versailles shopping centre and east of Highway 25 in Montreal.

Bulphred was scheduled to have a bail hearing at the Montreal courthouse on Friday but it was pushed back to Dec. 21.

The new charges also allege he advised someone to commit criminal acts that were not carried out, the murders of three people: his father, a person renting the apartment he broke into and a prostitute. The latter two people are not named in the charge sheet. Bulphred was also charged with possessing a weapon for the purpose of carrying out a crime and instruments commonly used for break ins.

In 2007, Bulphred and an accomplice made headlines when they were arrested as suspects in the firebombing of the Skver-Toldos Orthodox Jewish Boys School in Outremont in 2006 and a fire in 2007 at the YM-YWHA Ben Weider Jewish Community Centre, also known as the Snowdon Y.

In 2009, Bulphred pleaded guilty to both crimes and was sentenced to an overall seven-year prison term. He was released from a penitentiary in 2012, after having served the entirety of his sentence. But before he was released he agreed to an undertaking through which he was not allowed to communicate with Correctional Service Canada (CSC) employees.

He was arrested weeks later after police learned Bulphred trespassed on private property to peek inside homes. He also threatened the owner of one of the residences. As the police investigated those crimes investigators were informed that Bulphred had written letters to CSC employees.

While his second case was before the courts, Bulphred’s defence lawyer described him as an “ill young man living in his own world” and that he had displayed symptoms characteristic of Asperger’s, an autism spectrum disorder.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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• Montreal Jewish school firebomber fit to stand trial
• Man who set fire to school arrested again

A career criminal charged with carrying out the brazen armed robbery of a bank that forced the closure of several streets in Mile End two summers ago will act as his own lawyer throughout his trial. 

Alain Ste-Marie, 46, of Dorval, appeared disappointed Monday after Quebec Court Judge Guylaine Rivest rejected a request that his case be tossed out after claiming he was the victim of procedural abuse on the part of the Crown. Rivest called Ste-Marie’s motion baseless and full of hypothetical arguments before ordering that his trial on charges related to the armed robbery of a Toronto Dominion bank branch on Sept. 2, 2016, begin immediately. 

“Well then, now I need a pen,” said Ste-Marie from the prisoner’s dock of the courtroom where his trial will be heard during the course of a few days stretching into next week.

He made the remark while two provincial detention centre guards sat on each side of him. Ste-Marie is considered a security risk because, on Dec.17, 2007, he escaped from the Montreal Detention Centre during a snowstorm while accused in several armed robberies. Also, in 2012, Ste-Marie was again acting as his own lawyer when he asked a judge for permission to have a woman in the courtroom hand over documents to him. He claimed the documents were to help in his defence. But a guard who examined the folder full of documents found a smartphone and a small quantity of hashish hidden among them. 

Ste-Marie is on trial for the robbery of the bank branch located on Bernard Ave., near the corner of Hutchison St. He is alleged to have stormed into the bank along with a woman named Geneviève Dallaire. Guy Maisonneuve, an investigator for Toronto Dominion Bank and the first person to testify in the trial, provided details while Rivest was shown videos of a masked man who ran into the bank and jumped over a counter before rifling through the tills of two tellers. 

Maisonneuve said the robbers only made off with $410, and all of the cash was attached to different forms of anti-theft devices, including a GPS.

Dallaire was arrested near the scene of the robbery after a taxi that she and the robber tried to use as a getaway vehicle crashed into another car at the intersection of St-Urbain and St-Viateur Sts. The collision and the investigation of the bank robbery forced the closure of several streets in Mile End for hours. Ste-Marie is believed to have been inside the taxi, but managed to get away after it crashed. He was arrested in Longueuil several hours after the robbery was carried out.

Dallaire, 36, has already admitted to being an accomplice in the armed robbery. In August, she pleaded guilty to five charges related to the heist and was sentenced to an overall prison term of 30 months. When the time she had already served was factored into the sentence, she was left with 12 months to serve. 

Dallaire was eligible for parole in November, but the Commission québécoise des libérations conditionnelles (CQLC), the provincial parole board, denied her a release on Nov. 2. 

According to a summary of the CQLC’s decision, Dallaire admits she took part in the robbery by acting as a lookout near the entrance to the bank. She wore a mask and pointed a fake handgun (which turned out to be a cigarette lighter) at a person who tried to leave the bank. She said she was drunk and high on cocaine when the robbery was committed and she had not slept for days beforehand. She also said that the goal of the robbery was simply to score enough money to buy drugs. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

A Nova Scotia resident who acted as the getaway driver in a cold-blooded double murder carried out in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce seven years ago has been found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder following his second trial in the same case. 

On Monday, Leslie Greenwood, 48, was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Kirk (Cowboy) Murray and Antonio Onesi. The men were shot in 2010 in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in N.D.G. Greenwood’s first trial on the same charges ended in a mistrial in 2015 after the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. A second trial at the Montreal courthouse began in September before Superior Court Justice Michael Stober, and the second jury emerged with a verdict on Monday while in its seventh day of deliberation. 

“We had the advantage of knowing the strategy of the defence this time,” said Éric de Champlain, who prosecuted the case with Alexandre Gautier, when asked by reporters what the difference was the second time around.

He was referring to how Greenwood testified at length during his first trial and claimed he did not know that the two men he gave a lift to from Nova Scotia to Montreal — brothers Robert and Timothy Simpson — were going to kill Murray and Onesi. The brothers became collaborating witnesses in the case and testified that Greenwood agreed to act as a getaway driver in the murders. Robert Simpson testified that Jeffrey Albert Lynds, a Hells Angel based in Nova Scotia, wanted Murray dead because of a drug deal that went bad and that Onesi was killed simply because, as Murray’s driver that day, he was an unfortunate witness to what happened. 

The brothers also testified that the Hells Angel wanted Murray dead because he had failed in an attempt to murder Louis (Le Gros) Vigeant (a drug dealer Lynds owed $40,000 to) on Jan. 20, 2010. Brian (Cato) McGuire, 56, a LaSalle resident, admitted to also having a hand in the plot to murder Murray, and he is currently serving an eight-year prison term he received in the case in 2015. 

Lynds was also accused of the murders, but he committed suicide, at age 42, while detained in the case at a Montreal detention centre on Jan. 27, 2012. According to Robert Simpson, Lynds had been suspended from the biker gang (it was part of the motive behind the two murders) and suffered from anxiety and depression while awaiting his trial. Robert and Timothy Simpson pleaded guilty to the first-degree murders of both victims in 2011. They both received automatic life sentences with no chance of parole until they have served at least 25 years behind bars. 

With the first-degree murder convictions, Greenwood automatically received the same sentence as the Simpsons. But Stober set aside a court date next week to sentence Greenwood for the conspiracy charge he was convicted of as well. Before the day ended on Monday, Greenwood’s attorney, Paul Skolnik, advised Stober that Greenwood might consider filing an appeal based on the judge’s instructions to the jury. It is an option many defence lawyers consider in a trial involving a jury’s verdict.  

Greenwood is scheduled to go on trial in January in another double murder case in Nova Scotia. In that case, he is charged with the deaths of Barry Kirk Mersereau and Nancy Paula Christensen. The couple was shot to death in their home in Centre Burlington, N.S., in September 2000. Curtis Blair Lynds, the nephew of Jeffrey Lynds, has pleaded guilty in the Nova Scotia case.

pcherry@postmedia.com

A man who is serving time for having killed a passenger in his car while he was driving while impaired in LaSalle recently saw his release from a penitentiary revoked, in part because he reported back to a halfway house smelling of beer. 

The Parole Board of Canada was also not impressed with how Ryan Patrick McPhee, 37, a former Montrealer, disappeared from a halfway house for a few months this year. His curfew had been reduced when staff detected the smell of beer twice in one week when he reported in at night. 

According to a summary of a decision made recently by the parole board, McPhee disappeared from the halfway house May 14 and was arrested by police in St. Catharines, Ont., Aug. 14. 

McPhee still has roughly three months left to serve on the 39-month prison term he was left with Dec. 13, 2014, when he pleaded guilty to impaired driving causing the death of Derek Pion, 38, and refusing to take a breathalyzer test after the car he was driving smashed into tractor-trailer parked on Labatt Ave. in LaSalle in 2010. He reached his statutory release date, the two-thirds mark of his sentence, on Feb. 8 but the parole board ruled that he reside at a halfway house. 

McPhee also served time for his role in the April 2, 1995, deaths of Jocelyn and Frank Toope, an elderly couple who were murdered in their home in Beaconsfield. McPhee, who was 14 at the time, and two other youths broke into the home because they believed the Toopes were on vacation. McPhee testified about his role in the murders in adult court, in 2012, and admitted he struck Frank Toope, a 75-year-old Anglican minister, with a baseball bat during the attack on the couple. Jocelyn Toope was 70 at the time of the murders. McPhee received a three-year sentence, as a youth, after being convicted of second-degree murder.

The parole board made an apparent reference to the Toope murders in the summary of its decision, but it appears that reference was redacted from the copy obtained by the Montreal Gazette. It also appears that McPhee is serving his sentence in Ontario, as the decision to revoke his release was made by a parole board member based in that province. 

“Your behaviour while under supervision in the community has been dismal. Your institutional behaviour (inside penitentiaries) has shown the same pattern as you were involved in assaults, intimidation and substance abuse,” parole board member Suzanne Poirier wrote in her decision. “You have made no progress to address your risk factors although you had the opportunity to do so through counselling and programming. Instead you decided to abscond for a period of three months until your arrest.”

pcherry@postmedia.com

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• Parole denied for multiple offender Ryan Patrick McPhee, who took part in 1995 Toope murders
• Convicted murderer in Toope slayings recalls his role in grisly crime
• Tearful Ryan McPhee apologizes to victim's parents

Lino Matteo is expected to be a free man once again despite having recently been sentenced to his second prison term in less than 18 months in two different cases where he was convicted of defrauding hundreds of investors out of millions of dollars. 

On Wednesday, Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer agreed with a request, from Matteo’s lawyer George Calaritis, that he be released on bail while Matteo appeals his conviction in a case where a Quebec Court judge found him guilty of having violated 270 counts of Quebec’s Securities Act. Cournoyer was informed that the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) did not object to Matteo’s release after he agreed to follow a series of conditions. A third party agreed to post a $25,000 bond as part of the conditions. 

Matteo is required to reside in Quebec and is not allowed to make any transactions in securities while out on bail. Cournoyer also ordered that Matteo be present on Feb. 20 when the judge is expected to deliver his decision on the AMF’s request to dismiss Matteo’s appeal. Investors lost more than $130 million when his company went bankrupt in 2006. Some investors lost their life savings went it happened.

On Nov. 27, Quebec Court Judge Hélène Morin sentenced Matteo to the maximum sentence allowable in such a case, a five-year prison term, and said, “to this day, (Matteo) has shown no insight or sense of accountability.”

The decision to grant Matteo bail on Wednesday came exactly one year to the day that another Superior Court judge agreed to let Matteo out of a penitentiary in a different case where he is appealing his conviction, on June 2, 2016, in the longest jury trial ever held in Canada. In that case, Matteo was sentenced to an eight-year prison term, on July 6, 2016, after he was convicted of fraud, four counts of forgery and four counts of uttering forged documents. Matteo and two other men defrauded investors in Cinar Corp. out of more than $120 million by funnelling cash into offshore Bahamian accounts.

pcherry@postmedia.com

Two men, including the former director general of the city of Lorraine, were sentenced to five-year prison terms at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday in a case where their past sins caught up to them. 

Roger Lepage, 76, and Jean-Marc St. Hilaire, 68, were both arrested in January 2016 in Operation Malaise, a Sûreté du Québec investigation into a computer-savvy child pornography network through which, in some cases, pedophiles exchanged written accounts of how they had sexually abused children in the past. 

As Quebec Court Judge Pierre Labelle delivered his decision at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday, he noted that Lepage and St. Hilaire’s written accounts were so detailed SQ investigators were able to track down their past victims of sexual abuse with ease, even through some of it occurred more than two decades ago. 

“The Court can only imagine the immense shock the victims experienced when the police contacted them,” Labelle said before he sentenced each man to overall five-year prison terms. 

Roger Lepage

“The testimony of your victims will resound in my ears for a long time,” the judge said specifically to Lepage. In November, one of Lepage’s four victims testified that his life as an adult has been a disaster because of the abuse Lepage put him through as a boy. 

With term served factored into their sentences Lepage, the director general of Lorraine between 1980 and 2000, and St. Hilaire, who admitted to having sexually abused nine boys, were left with prison terms of two years less a day. Both men also received long-term offender designations

Jean-Marc St-Hilaire

which means the Parole Board of Canada can attach strict conditions to monitor their eventual releases from detention centres — for five years in Lepage’s case and three years in St. Hilaire’s. As part of their guilty pleas, the pedophiles admitted they sexually abused the same two boys during the summer of 2000 in Valleyfield. Lepage admitted he abused his four victims between 1995 and 2003.

Fifteen men in all were charged in Operation Malaise. The five-year sentences are the longest to be delivered in the case so far. But the six other men who have been sentenced to date were not accused of actual sexual abuse. Two other men who were charged with possession of child pornography have sentence hearings scheduled for next week. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

Related

• Pedophile who 'ruined the lives of many children' to be sentenced in December

The most potentially incriminating evidence gathered in Sabrine Djermane and El Mahdi Jamali’s alleged attempt to travel to Syria to join ISIL was never heard by the jury now deliberating in their trial. 

Statements made by two of Djermane’s sisters (and a few other people) to anti-terrorism investigators in April 2015 were key to the investigation and led to the trial that began in September. The jury assembled to hear evidence in the case at the Montreal courthouse was sequestered Thursday afternoon after Superior Court Justice Marc David delivered his final instructions to the panel.

The couple are accused of attempting to leave Canada to join the terrorist group ISIL in its attempt to establish an Islamic state in Syria and with possessing the materials to assemble a pressure cooker bomb. Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) investigators happened to find evidence of the pressure cooker bomb while they carried out search warrants looking for evidence the couple supported ISIL and were heading to Syria.

In the weeks before Djermane, 21, and Jamali, 20, were arrested on April 14, 2015, Montreal’s Muslim community was grappling with reports that at least six young people, including students who attended Collège de Maisonneuve, the same CEGEP as the couple, had left Canada for ISIL-held territory in Syria. In March that year, Djermane left her family’s apartment in St-Michel and signed a lease to rent a condo on Aird Ave. along with Jamali. The parents of both knew they wanted to marry, but two of Djermane’s three sisters — Rania and Fatiha — were concerned she had become radicalized. Those concerns were based, in part, on material Jamali posted on a Facebook page indicating he supported ISIL’s battle in Syria. 

Fatiha’s concerns are what started the INSET investigation. But it was comments Sabrine made to Rania (while Sabrine was being investigated) that provided INSET investigators with supposedly clear evidence of Sabrine’s intentions. 

According to affidavits filed to obtain search warrants, Rania met with two INSET investigators — Keven Rouleau and Martine Louisma — on April 13, 2015, the day before her sister and Jamali were arrested. She arranged the meeting two days after having what she described as a disturbing conversation with Sabrine. 

“We are corrupt by staying in Canada. Here in Canada we hide the true words of the prophet (Muhammad). The imams are corrupt. The RCMP is everywhere in our mosques,” are some of the comments Rania attributed to her sister while she met with Rouleau and Louisma.

“If you have to kill people to protect your Muslim brothers, you have to do it,” was the most potentially incriminating statement Rania relayed to Rouleau and Louisma. The details contained in the affidavits are allegations and have not been proven in court.

According to one affidavit, Rania also told the investigators that Sabrine told her that “even if she ends up serving 15 to 20 years in prison, she would still be ready to fight in Syria. Sabrine Djermane shared with (Rania) that there are several (ISIL supporters) here who are ready to attack Canada. They are only waiting for the message.”

The younger sister also said Sabrine told her she would announce her departure for Syria (to her family) in a letter and gave her a parting hug “like it would be their last one.”

Rania also told the INSET investigators Jamali had recently sent her a link to a video posted on YouTube titled “The Doctrine of the Mujahidin” that featured speeches from terrorist leaders liked Osama Bin Laden. 

One year after Djermane and Jamali were arrested, while the preliminary inquiry was well underway during the spring of 2016, Rania did a complete about-face and, according to a source familiar with the investigation, claimed everything she told Rouleau and Louisma was false. She was not called as a witness in the preliminary inquiry or during the current trial. 

In September, she was charged with “voluntarily attempting to obstruct, divert or thwart justice, by declaring that she lied in her previous statements” about her sister. Her case returns to court on Monday. 

Rania was never called as a Crown witness for obvious reasons, but her sister Fatiha was also noticeably absent from the prosecution’s witness list despite having been the person who touched off the investigation.

According to one of the affidavits: “(Fatiha Djermane) shared her concerns that her sister had become radicalized. (She) explained that following a conference she attended on the subject in Ottawa, she has became aware of the phenomenon and that is why she has concerns for her sister. (Sabrine Djermane) had left the family residence, was isolated from her entourage, and had abandoned her courses at (her CEGEP).”

The jury has been asked to deliver a verdict on three charges in all. The couple are charged with knowingly participating in or contributing to, directly or indirectly, any activity of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of any terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity, possessing explosive substances with the intention to put lives in danger or cause serious damage to property, and committing a criminal act for the profit of, or under the direction of, a terrorist group by being in possession of an explosive substance.

On Thursday, while delivering his instruction to the jury, David noted that the materials required to assemble a pressure cooker bomb were found at three different addresses: the condo on Aird Ave. the couple had begun renting in March 2015, and the apartments where their families resided. During the trial, the defence argued that two parts of the instructions on how to make the bomb — Christmas tree lights and sandpaper — were found inside the condo on Aird Ave., but that it was possible the items were already there when they moved in. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

A young Montrealer pleaded guilty on Thursday to having shot and killed the wrong man while he was seeking revenge for the death of a friend. 

Jayson Riché-Paquet, 20, appeared before Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc-André Blanchard at the Montreal courthouse where he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Aug. 22, 2015, death of Serge Saninga. In doing so, Riché-Paquet admitted he was actually trying to kill Davidson Arretus, 21, a man Riché-Paquet believed had played a role in the 2014 death of his friend Salem Yahiaoui. 

“Riché-Paquet (believed) that Davidson Arretus was one of the belligerents who had caused the death of Yahiaoui (who was stabbed during a fight). Arretus was never charged due to a lack of evidence,” Blanchard said as he read from a joint statement of facts agreed upon by prosecutor Louis Bouthillier and three defence lawyers in the case. 

While Riché-Paquet and his accomplice, Randy Plaisir, 22, were initially charged with first-degree murder in the case, they pleaded guilty to reduced charges on Thursday. Both men admitted to having conspired to kill Arretus. Plaisir admitted he was driving the car Riché-Paquet fired from when he  shot Saninga by accident, but Plaisir did not plead guilty to the actual homicide. 

At the time of the shooting, Arretus and Saninga were together and had just exited a convenience store, near the intersection of 25th Ave. and Robert Blvd. in the Villeray—Saint-Michel—Parc-Extension borough.

Riché-Paquet was using his father’s car for the drive-by shooting. As Arretus and Saninga left the store, the car slowed down, a passenger side window was lowered and someone shouted out Arretus’s name in Creole. Four shots were fired, but they all missed Arretus. Saninga was struck in the head. According to the coroner’s report on his death, he was taken to the Santa Cabrini Hospital in St-Léonard and was declared dead an hour later. Later that day, Arretus sent Riché-Paquet an emoticon of a kiss through his Facebook page. 

For reasons not made clear in the statement of facts, three days before the shooting, Riché-Paquet filmed himself, using his cellphone, manipulating the firearm he would later use to kill Saninga. In 2016, the Montreal police seized the gun used to shoot Saninga and noted that it matched the one Riché-Paquet posed with in the video. Investigators were also able to place his father’s car at the scene of the crime through a computer installed inside the vehicle. 

Arretus has a criminal record. On Nov. 16, 2016, he received a 19-month prison term for the illegal possession of a firearm that had been seized from his car. The Montreal police seized the gun from Arretus three months after the failed attempt to kill him. 

Saninga’s tragic death touched a nerve in St-Michel. A month after he was killed, on Sept. 19, 2015, community groups staged a march against violence in his memory. The march was attended by more than 50 people, including several politicians and relatives of the victim. Saninga was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and his family (he had five siblings) reportedly left the war-torn country to immigrate to Canada in 2006 to find a better life. 

The case against Riché-Paquet and Plaisir will return to court for a sentencing hearing on Feb. 9. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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• Two arrests for fatal shooting in Montreal last summer Montreal Gazette

A Hells Angel who was on the lam for eight years until he was arrested in downtown Montreal last month agreed to remain detained over the holidays while he waits for a bail hearing. 

Marc Bordage, 54, smiled as he looked around a courtroom at the Montreal courthouse on Friday while his lawyer, Julio Peris, agreed that his bail hearing could be delayed to Jan. 11. 

The longtime member of the biker gang’s Quebec City chapter had been a wanted man since 2009, when he was sought in Operation SharQc, an investigation that saw most of the gang’s members in this province plead guilty to being part of a general conspiracy to murder rival gang members between 1994 and 2002. Bordage faced serious charges in Operation SharQc, including 18 counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. But all of those charges were stayed Oct. 28, 2006, after the only case to go to trial in the investigation revealed the prosecution held back evidence from defence lawyers. 

Technically, Bordage was no longer a wanted man when heavily armed police officers arrested him at Phillips Square on Nov. 23. The following day, the Crown objected to Bordage’s release. 

He is charged with impersonating another person, living or dead, between Sept. 24 and the day of his arrest, possessing fake identification and two counts related to being in possession of a forged passport. 

Sources familiar with the investigation have confirmed a report, published last month by La Presse, that the Crown has objected to Bordage’s release because he is being investigated for something else. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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A South Shore man is facing the possibility of a five-year prison term and might be declared a long-term offender in a case where he admitted to having threatened five teenage girls while trying to extort sex from them through online social networks. 

Philippe Truchon, 37, of Longueuil, was arrested this year after several police forces across Quebec received complaints from teens who reported a stranger communicated with them through social networks like Facebook and ended up threatening them. In two of the cases, Truchon chose teenagers who had posted that they were looking for a job. Using the aliases “Phil Lawrie” and “Phil Leroy” he pretended to offer them work. But his offers quickly turned violent as he threatened the minors (the victims were between the ages of 15 and 17) if they refused to have sex with him or to pose nude for him over the internet. 

In one case, on March 16, Truchon contacted a 15-year-old girl in Repentigny and made comments about her personal photos. The girl told him she wasn’t interested in him. According to a summary of the investigation that was entered into the court record, Truchon replied that he would be having sex with the girl soon “whether she wanted it or not” and that by the end she would be in so much pain she would wish she were dead. The girl filed a complaint with the police five days later. 

On July 19, Truchon pleaded guilty to 12 criminal charges, including five counts of child luring. Since then, prosecutor Roxane Laporte has announced she is seeking to have Truchon declared a long-term offender, which would allow for conditions to be imposed on Truchon for several years after he finishes a prison term. 

On Friday, Laporte informed Quebec Court Judge Manon Ouimet that she will be seeking a five-year prison term and will request that Truchon be declared a long-term offender for 10 years, the maximum period allowed for such a designation. To support her argument, she produced an evaluation done recently by a psychiatrist who noted that Truchon’s family is fed up with his crimes and wants nothing to do with him. 

“When he leaves the prison milieu it could present problems in the future as he won’t have a precise location where he can live,” the psychiatrist wrote, while recommending the long-term offender designation as a means to monitor his release. 

Laporte’s request is also based in part on Truchon’s criminal past. She was also the prosecutor in a different case, in 2011, when Truchon pleaded guilty to four counts of child luring through the internet. In that case, the police had evidence Truchon approached 285 teenage girls through social networks like Facebook. A sexologist described Truchon as “a ticking time bomb” while Laporte argued, in 2011, that he deserved a five-year prison term for his crimes. The judge in that case disagreed and sentenced him instead to a three-year prison term. 

Defence lawyer Louis Morena asked that his client be given a chance to read the documents Laporte filed on Friday before he decides whether or not to contest having the long-term offender designation as part of his sentence. 

The case will return to court in January. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Adele Sorella will be released on bail while she awaits her second trial on charges she murdered her two young daughters. 

During a hearing at the Laval courthouse on Friday, Quebec Superior Court Justice Mario Longpré agreed that Sorella, 51, can be released after he was informed the Crown did not object to her being granted bail. Sorella was granted bail in 2010, while she awaited her first trial. She was found guilty on June 24, 2013, of the first-degree murders of her daughters, Sabrina, 8, and Amanda, 9. She respected her bail conditions in full for more than two years while she awaited her first trial. 

She had been incarcerated at a federal penitentiary since 2013 but, on Dec. 4, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned the jury’s verdicts based on four different issues, including errors made by Superior Court Justice Carol Cohen when she instructed the jury. Three Quebec Court of Appeal judges who weighed in on the case were unanimous in their decision, making it unlikely the Crown will ask the Supreme Court of Canada to review it. 

On Friday, Longpré ordered that a relative of Sorella post a $25,000 bond before she is released. He also imposed a series of conditions, including that she reside in Quebec and follow treatment prescribed to her by a doctor. 

Sorella’s daughters were found dead inside the family’s home in Laval on March 31, 2009. The Crown’s theory in the first murder trial was that Sorella had somehow convinced her daughters to remain inside a hyperbaric chamber until they died of asphyxiation. Sorella had purchased the chamber in 2008 to treat Sabrina’s juvenile rheumatoid arthritis but the jury heard evidence the girls liked to pretend it was a tent they could camp out in. A pathologist testified that the girls would have fallen asleep before they died and that the method left no trace of how they were killed. 

Sorella was not home when Sabrina and Amanda’s bodies were discovered. Police found her the following day after she crashed her car into a utility pole in Laval. At the time of the murders, Sorella’s husband, Mafia leader Giuseppe De Vito, had been on the lam for three years while wanted in a cocaine smuggling case. He was arrested in 2010 and was subsequently sentenced to a 15-year prison term after he was convicted in the cocaine smuggling case. He died of cyanide poisoning on July 8, 2013, inside a federal penitentiary. 

Sorella’s case will return to court on Jan. 17 to possibly set a date for her new trial. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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The jury in the trial of Sabrine Djermane and El Mahdi Jamali emerged from its deliberation on Monday with a question that was hotly debated outside of their presence just before the panel was sequestered last week. 

While in its fifth day of deliberation, the jury asked Superior Court Justice Marc David, the presiding judge in the trial at the Montreal courthouse, to repeat his opinion on whether a recipe for a bomb can be considered to be among the ingredients in an explosive substance as defined in the Criminal Code. It is a sign the jury might be debating whether Djermane was in possession of the ingredients required to make a homemade bomb. The Crown alleges both of the accused were preparing a pressure-cooker bomb identical to those used in the Boston Marathon in 2013. 

A handwritten recipe for the same bomb, allegedly copied from one published in a terrorist propaganda magazine, was found in a binder on a nightstand next to Djermane’s bed in a condo the couple were renting on Aird Ave. Other incriminating evidence was found in the apartment where Jamali lived with his parents just before the couple rented the condo. Investigators found evidence — all contained in a Dollarama shopping bag — that Jamali purchased several everyday household items required to assemble the bomb all in one purchase. There is no direct evidence to tie Djermane to that purchase. 

“You have the smile of a Cheshire cat,” David told prosecutor Lyne Décarie before the jury entered the room to hear his reply to their query.

It was an obvious reference to the cat from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its iconic mischievous grin. While David was delivering his instructions to the jury last week, he told the jury that, under the law, the recipe could not be considered an explosive substance. Décarie objected to this vigorously outside of the jury’s presence last week. 

Five days later, the jury’s question was focused specifically on the issue. David maintained his position on Monday, but said the recipe can be important when the jury determines what Djermane and Jamali’s intentions might have been. 

The couple are also accused of preparing to leave Canada to travel to Syria to join the terrorist group ISIL. 

On Monday, David also asked Décarie to advise him, later this week, of what sort of sentence she will seek if the accused are found guilty. In doing so, he revealed that if Jamali, 20, and Djermane, 21, are convicted of all three of the charges they face, they will have to serve consecutive sentences and will be required to serve half of their prison terms before they are eligible for parole — as opposed to the standard one-third.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Hisham Saadi, the 48-year-old man charged earlier this year with making bomb threats that caused Concordia University to evacuate three of its buildings, has been returned behind bars for allegedly violating one of his bail conditions. 

The new charge filed at the Montreal courthouse on Monday alleges Saadi violated a curfew imposed by Quebec Court Judge Nathalie Fafard in March when she agreed to grant him bail. He was supposed to be at an address in Laval between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. unless he requires treatment at a hospital or is involved in training at another address. Saadi is alleged to have violated the curfew sometime on Monday. 

He was arrested by the Montreal police and appeared before a Quebec Court judge for a brief hearing Monday afternoon. He was ordered detained and is scheduled to have a bail hearing on Tuesday. 

On March 1, Concordia was forced to evacuate three of its buildings, including the Hall Building on de Maisonneuve Blvd., after several media outlets received a letter threatening that explosives would be detonated at two of the school’s downtown buildings.

Saadi faces three charges in the case, including one that alleges he committed acts likely to cause fear that terrorist acts were about to be committed. Another charge alleges he threatened to kill or cause harm to people at Concordia. The third charge alleges Saadi committed mischief.

His trial is scheduled to begin on Feb. 5. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Being curious is not a crime. 

That is how one of the four lawyers who represented Sabrine Djermane, 21, and El Mahdi Jamali, 20, replied when asked how a jury found their clients not guilty on all of the terrorism charges they had faced since April 2015.

On Tuesday, the jury at the Montreal courthouse found only Jamali guilty on one count, a reduced charge — possession of an explosive substance without lawful excuse — that the presiding judge, Superior Court Justice Marc David, added as an option while he was instructing the jury on Thursday. 

Djermane and Jamali were acquitted on the three more serious charges they faced: knowingly participating in or contributing to, directly or indirectly, any activity of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of any terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity; possessing explosive substances with the intention to put lives in danger or cause serious damage to property; and committing a criminal act for the profit of, or under the direction of, a terrorist group by being in possession of an explosive substance.

“I think the jury knew that looking at articles on La Presse or Radio Canada (websites) is not a crime. It is not a crime to be curious about what was going on in Syria,” said Tiago Murias, the lawyer who represented Jamali throughout the trial that began in mid-September. “Being curious is not a crime. That was my fundamental position all along.” 

Djermane’s lawyer, Charles Benmouyal, said his client was in tears after she learned she had been acquitted on all four of the charges. 

“I’m sure they were tears of joy,” Benmouyal said, adding he believed the jury “saw through circumstantial evidence” and could not find concrete proof the couple were planning to travel to Syria to join the terrorist group ISIL. 

Benmouyal and Murias were referring to evidence that the couple used laptops and tablets to research material about what was happening in Syria in 2015. Some of the material involved propaganda statements made by known terrorists, but the videos were accessible from sites like YouTube. Other evidence showed the couple had consulted articles or watched videos about ISIL that were available on mainstream media sites. 

The Crown had evidence the couple purchased plane tickets to Greece and had reported their passports stolen in order to obtain new ones. In fact, their passports were never stolen but were being kept by the parents of both after several students at Collège de Maisonneuve reportedly left Canada to join ISIL in its efforts to establish an Islamic state. During their bail hearing, Jamali’s father said he kept his son’s passport in a safe at home. Greece is considered to have been the first destination for many people who sought to join ISIL by travelling to Syria though Turkey. But the Crown had no evidence to prove the couple planned to travel beyond Greece. 

In his closing arguments, Benmouyal told the jury the Crown had proved nothing more than that the couple wanted to get married against their parents wishes and planned to travel to Greece. On Tuesday, Murias and Benmouyal confirmed that Djermane and Jamali are still a couple. 

“They still love each other,” Benmouyal said.

Hours after the jury delivered the verdicts, David sentenced Jamali to the time he has already served awaiting the outcome of his case — the equivalent of a four-year prison term. The couple were then transferred to another courtroom, before Quebec Court Judge Sylvie Durand, where prosecutor Lyne Décarie agreed the couple could be released while they still have a case pending involving a peace bond. The peace bond was the first case filed against the couple as the Crown initially only sought to prevent the couple from leaving Canada. The criminal charges were filed days later, back in April 2015, after search warrants were carried out. 

In order to secure their releases on Tuesday, Djermane and Jamali agreed to a series of temporary conditions. They are not allowed to visit websites that promote terrorism or extremist religious ideals. They are also not allowed to visit the Centre communitaire Islamique de l’est de Montréal (also known as the Centre communitaire Islamique Assahaba) on Bélanger St. According to the Quebec business registry, the centre’s president is Adil Charkaoui, a controversial imam and an anti-Islamophobia activist. 

“It was a suggestion that was made to the defence and they accepted it. I don’t want to go into it further,” Décarie said when asked by reporters about the condition involving Charkaoui’s centre. 

The case involving the peace bond will return to court on Jan. 16. The Crown’s goal is to convince a judge that the couple should have conditions imposed on them for a fixed period of time (in most cases the period is set at 12 months). 

During the couple’s bail hearing, held in June 2015, Jamali’s father, El Hassan Jamali, described his son as a timid, gentle person. The father also said he brought his family to Canada from Morocco in 2004 in search of a better life. 

“When (your children) have reached a certain age, you have to show them the values of Islam, how to pray, to respect others, how to behave because Islam is a religion of tolerance and cohabitation. I immigrated here for the education of my children. It was the primary reason for coming here and, since my youth, I dreamed of living in Canada because of its nature, its politeness. I had seen many documentaries on Canada,” Jamali’s father said two years ago. 

Djermane’s family showed up in court after the verdicts were delivered and her father, Mohammed Djermane, wrapped his arms around Benmouyal in the courthouse corridor and gave him a long hug. 

During the bail hearing in 2015, the parents of both admitted they were unaware Djermane and Jamali had stopped attending courses at Collège de Maisonneuve weeks before they were arrested on April 14, 2015. 

The evidence against Jamali, in terms of being in possession of an explosive substance, appeared to be clear-cut. The Crown presented evidence that he had purchased several items, at a Dollarama, that were part of the ingredients necessary to assemble a pressure-cooker bomb similar to those used in the Boston Marathon in 2013. Jamali had used his own debit card to purchase the items and left everything, including the receipt, in one shopping bag that was found when INSET investigators searched his parents home.

It was more of a challenge for the Crown to convi‎ct Djermane on charges related to the pressure-cooker bomb. A step-by-step guide to build the bomb was found on a nightstand in an apartment the couple had begun renting in March 2015. The defence also argued that other common household items from the step-by-step guide that were found inside the condo might have already been there when the couple arrived.

Near the end of his instructions on Thursday, David told the jury that the step-by-step instructions could not be considered an explosive substance. Crown prosecutor Lyne Décarie objected to this vigorously and, on Monday, the jury asked the judge to clarify. Before he answered the question, David discussed the matter, outside of the jury’s presence, with Décarie a second time and repeated he still did not agree the guide should be considered an explosive substance. He also joked aloud that the issue “will end up on Wellington St.,” a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada and that he expects the Crown to appeal his decision on the step-by-step guide.

On Tuesday, Décarie said the prosecution will go over David’s instructions to the jury carefully before deciding whether to proceed with an appeal. 

pcherry@postmedia.com

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Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau, the man who staged a spectacular escape from a provincial detention centre using a helicopter four years ago, has been sentenced to an overall 16-year prison term for his leading role in the caper that made headlines worldwide. 

The sentence was delivered by Superior Court Justice Marc David at the St-Jérôme courthouse on Wednesday. With time served and other issues factored into the sentence, Hudon-Barbeau, 41, was left with a little more than 106 months left to serve. But, in November, he was convicted of first-degree murder and second-degree murder, and will eventually receive automatic life sentences. During a different sentence hearing held earlier on Wednesday, before a different judge, Crown prosecutor Steve Baribeau reportedly asked that Hudon-Barbeau serve at least 50 years behind bars before he becomes eligible for parole for the murders. Justice France Charbonneau will render her decision on Hudon-Barbeau’s parole eligibility at a later date. 

In his 32-page decision, David wrote that Hudon-Barbeau’s crimes related to the escape actually merited an 18-year sentence, but he subtracted two years because he was presented with evidence that Hudon-Barbeau’s rights had been violated after he was returned behind bars and detained at the Rivière des Prairies Detention Centre. Because he was considered a high risk of escaping again, authorities kept Hudon-Barbeau in a section of the jail where he had almost no interaction with other people and was only allowed to go outside for an hour a day for fresh air. David wrote that authorities at the detention centre should have reviewed Hudon-Barbeau’s file regularly to see if the very restrictive conditions could have been loosened. 

On March 17, 2013, two men working for Hudon-Barbeau, Billi Beaudoin and Steven Mathieu Marchisio, hired a helicopter pilot for what they falsely claimed would be a sightseeing ride through the Laurentians. After the helicopter took off, Marchisio ordered the pilot to land on the roof of a building at the detention centre where Hudon-Barbeau was waiting. 

After he and another detainee jumped on board, the pilot was ordered to land on the grounds of the Estérel Hotel in Ste-Adèle where the men disembarked and made their way to a waiting getaway vehicle. Hours later, Marchisio and Hudon-Barbeau were tracked by the Sûreté du Québec to a residence in Chertsey. They were arrested after a shootout with the police. Beaudoin and the other detainee who escaped, Dany Provencal, were also arrested shortly after the breakout. 

Five other men were eventually sentenced for the escape from the St-Jérôme Detention Centre. Their sentences ranged from seven years for Provencal (who just happened to be nearby when the helicopter landed and decided to jump on board), to the 15-year prison term Marchisio received. Marchisio was the person who pointed a gun at the helicopter pilot and ordered him to land on the roof of the detention centre. Marchisio also fired several shots toward SQ officers after he and Hudon-Barbeau were found in Chertsey. 

On Nov. 17, a jury at the courthouse in St-Jérôme found Hudon-Barbeau guilty of the first-degree murder of Pierre-Paul Fortier and the second-degree murder of Fréderick Murdock. He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Vincent Pietrantonio and another man who cannot be identified because of a publication ban. Murdock and Pietrantonio were shot on Oct. 12, 2012, at Pietrantonio’s home in Ste-Marguerite-du-Lac-Masson, a town about 80 kilometres northwest of Montreal. Pietrantonio, a known loan shark, managed to escape and sought help at a nearby police station, but Murdock, Pietrantonio’s bodyguard, died inside the home. 

Six days later, on Oct. 18, 2012, Fortier was shot at a construction site behind a hotel in St-Sauveur. 

When Hudon-Barbeau’s trial began in late September, prosecutor Steve Baribeau told the jury the actual shooter in each case was Ryan Wolfson, a hit man who was acting on orders from Hudon-Barbeau. Wolfson was convicted of murdering Murdock and the attempted murder of Pietrantonio last year.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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A teacher at a Montreal elementary school was acquitted on Thursday in a case where he was accused of having assaulted a young autistic boy who was acting up during a gym class. 

Jose Daniel Martinez, 45, was accused of assault last year, on Sept. 15, 2016, following an incident that occurred the previous school year, during the spring of 2016. 

The school is not identified in the verdict delivered at the Montreal courthouse by Quebec Court Judge Joëlle Roy. In the decision, the judge notes that: “The accused admits to having committed an assault on the child, but within the context of a correction.” But later in her six-page decision the description of events casts doubt as to whether Martinez actually struck the boy.

Despite this, Martinez used a section of the Criminal Code that touches on the force teachers can use as part of his defence. The section states: “Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances.”

The incident happened on April 4, 2016, while the boy (who was around eight years old at the time) and his fellow students were waiting for a gym class to begin. The other students were seated and awaiting instructions but the boy, who is autistic and was attending regular classes, was on the floor and “spinning around like a top.” Both sides in the case agreed the boy has “difficulty listening to instructions, remaining still and maintaining a routine.” 

The degree of the so-called “assault” is where the prosecution and the defence differed. An eight-year-old classmate of the boy testified during Martinez’s trial that the accused kicked the boy while he was lying on the ground and grabbed him by the shoulders while lifting him up. 

Martinez testified in his defence that he merely placed his foot on the boy’s chest to stop him from spinning. He admitted he grabbed the boy by the shoulders to pick him up and asked the boy to leave the class. He also said the boy debated him while refusing to leave. Roy noted in her decision that the boy was not injured. 

“During his testimony, the accused did not deny being exasperated during the incident because it was recurring behaviour on (the boy’s) part and (Martinez) did not possess any training in particular with autistic children,” Roy wrote in her decision. “The intention of the accused at that moment was to make sure the class was safe, as well as (the boy), and to make (the boy) aware of his behaviour.

“The accused did not hide his disarray with the lack of resources at the school and the lack of support from the (school’s leaders), inadequate training, and to a limit, the improvisation that such situations require.” 

While acquitting Martinez, Roy determined she agreed the force used by Martinez was insignificant and fell within the transitory authority that is passed on from a parent to teacher under the Criminal Code.  

pcherry@postmedia.com

Harinder Singh Cheema’s sexual advances on a woman just hours after he killed his wife were factored into the sentence he received for murder on Thursday. 

Superior Court Justice Pierre Labrie called Cheema, 38, “self-centred, deceitful and manipulative” while ordering that he serve at least 15 years behind bars before he becomes eligible for parole on the life sentence he received for the second-degree murder of his wife. On Dec. 24, 2007, Cheema stabbed Gurpreet Kaur 14 times and left their apartment in the St-Laurent borough with their two young children.

A pathologist later determined that Cheema probably continued to stab his wife while she was dead. When the police searched the couple’s apartment, they found a suitcase packed with Kaur’s clothing, a sign she might have been preparing to leave Cheema when he killed her. 

After leaving his 18-month-old daughter and 20-day-old son with a person he barely knew, Cheema fled to Ontario, where he contacted a woman he had met a few years before while he was detained in Laval for having entered Canada from India with a fake passport. The woman was a security guard at the federal immigration detention centre while Cheema was detained. 

As Labrie noted in his summary of the case on Thursday, Cheema fled to Ontario where he contacted the woman, had dinner with her family and made sexual advances toward her after they ate. The woman rejected Cheema’s advances because her family was in another room of their residence. Cheema slept at the woman’s house and, the following day, he convinced the woman, who was unaware of what had happened back in Montreal, to purchase a plane ticket that allowed him to fly to Vancouver. From there he met a friend who helped him sneak into the U.S., and  he ended up living in California for years. He married another woman and built a new life before he made efforts to become a U.S. citizen, using another fake Indian passport, and his fingerprints revealed his true identity. He was returned to Canada during the summer of 2015. 

“He even had the callousness to make sexual advances on (the woman in Ontario) on the same day he killed his wife,” Labrie said, while citing his many reasons for ordering that Cheema serve more than the minimum time required (10 years) before he becomes eligible for parole. Prosecutor Maude Payette had asked that the parole eligibility be set at 16 years. 

“He also started a new life (in California) as if nothing happened,” Labrie said later on in his decision. “And because of Mr. Cheema’s crime, two young children were deprived of their mother at a very young age.”

 pcherry@postmedia.com

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