A Concordia University student charged with making bomb threats that caused the school to evacuate three of its downtown buildings last year saw his trial delayed for a third time since he was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in February.
Hisham Saadi, 48, made a brief appearance at the Montreal courthouse before Quebec Court Judge Melanie Hebert on Wednesday only to see his trial carried over to a date in June. On March 1, 2017, Saadi sent a letter, claiming to be from a group called the Council of conservative citizens of Canada, to several media outlets. The letter also claimed homemade bombs had been placed in the university and were intended to injure Muslims. Saadi, who is a Muslim, admitted during his trial that he penned the letter. It was sent hours before Saadi was scheduled to have a microeconomics exam.
On Feb. 8, with the trial in its third day, defence lawyer Caroline Braun asked that Saadi undergo a psychiatric evaluation at the Philippe Pinel Institute. Since then, the case has returned to court on three dates, including Wednesday, with nothing of substance being said.
Later in the day Wednesday, Saadi appeared before a different Quebec Court judge, Joëlle Roy, where he was scheduled to have a sentence hearing for having violated one of the conditions of the release he was granted following his arrest in March 2017. In that case, Braun asked that the hearing be rescheduled for September because the prosecutor, François Allard, was not available on Wednesday. Braun suggested that Roy will be presented with a joint recommendation on a sentence on Sept. 14.
When asked by a Montreal Gazette reporter if Saadi’s trial will indeed resume in June, Braun replied only with: “Mystère et boule de gomme,” a French expression that roughly means the future is uncertain.