CrimeLocal Information
Printed Feb 07, 2025 • 2 minute learn
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Seth Bertrand is proven on the Ontario Superior Courtroom of Justice in Windsor on Nov. 18, 2024, throughout his trial on a terrorism cost. Picture by Dan Janisse / Ontario Chronicle
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Even his lawyer concedes Seth Bertrand holds views on gays, Blacks and Jews which might be “problematic” and even “deplorable.”
However harbouring such vile ideas and expressing these views doesn’t make the younger Windsor man a terrorist, defence counsel Bobby Russon argued in a downtown courtroom Friday.
After the Crown just lately concluded the case for the prosecution, the defence filed an software for a directed verdict, arguing earlier than Superior Courtroom Justice Maria Carroccia that the case be dismissed on account of an alleged inadequate lack of proof to convict.
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Following an undercover operation led by the RCMP, Bertrand was charged in 2022 with having “knowingly participated in or contributed to, directly or indirectly, the activities of a terrorist group … for the purpose of enhancing the ability of the terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity.”
At a listening to on Friday, Russon conceded the Crown had “some evidence in relation to some elements” that Bertrand, now 22, participated in or contributed to a listed terrorist group, particularly the Atomwaffen Division, aka Nationwide Socialist Order. However the defence argued the Crown had supplied no proof regarding the accused both enhancing or facilitating that banned group’s actions.
Throughout the trial, the prosecution introduced up Bertrand’s previous that included a string of unsettling incidents in Windsor focusing on a homosexual couple’s residence and the Trans Wellness Ontario workplace in 2021 at across the similar time he stuffed in an software to hitch Atomwaffen.
“He committed hate crimes and vandalism — not terrorism,” stated Russon, including his younger shopper didn’t know on the time that the group he was in search of to hitch had been listed as a banned international terrorist entity.
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Arguing in a present trial that his younger shopper just isn’t a terrorist, defence lawyer Bobby Russon is proven exterior of the Ontario Superior Courtroom of Justice in Windsor on June 17, 2024, following a special trial. Picture by Madeline Mazak / Ontario Chronicle
Whereas all prison legal guidelines have the “lofty” objective of defending the general public, prosecutor David Schermbrucker informed the court docket that Canada’s “anti-terrorism legislation is dealing with a particular enhanced risk.”
If the threatened exercise is carried out, he stated, it may trigger “serious damage, of a greater magnitude than most other crimes, even murder. We’re talking about multiple murders and widespread damage.”
In arguing in opposition to the defence software, Schermbrucker stated Parliament designed Canada’s anti-terrorism legal guidelines to “prevent acts rather than bring the offenders to justice.
“Prevention is the be-all and end-all of anti-terrorism legislation.”
On the subject of confronting terrorism, Schermbrucker stated the Felony Code lowers the bar and makes it “quite clear that if you commit something short of a criminal act, it still may be a terrorism offence.”
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In a ruling in December, Justice Carroccia rejected defence motions in search of to have key Crown proof rejected, together with the admissibility of a police interview carried out with Bertrand on the day of his arrest, in addition to secretly recorded conversations between the accused and an undercover RCMP agent.
The trial included testimony by two undercover RCMP brokers concerned in a months-long ‘Mr. Big’ sting and whose identities are protected underneath a court docket order,
Justice Carroccia delivers her determination on the directed verdict software on Feb. 27. If she sides with the Crown, the subsequent step is setting a date for closing arguments.
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