We’re killing each other less than we used to

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 12:09 PM - 0 Comments

The murder rate fell again in 2010

In 2010, police reported 554 homicides in Canada, 56 fewer than the year before. This decline follows a decade of relative stability. The homicide rate fell to 1.62 for every 100,000 population, its lowest level since 1966.

Firearms-related and gang-related homicides declined. The number of homicides by intimate partners (including spouses) was stable.

The police blotter

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: RCMP arrested a 65-year-old Surrey man for allegedly selling homemade “moonshine” to walk-up customers from the basement window of his home, as well as operating an illegal still containing approximately 200 gallons of illegally distilled spirits in various stages of fermentation.The homemade booze was found in a trailer at the rear of the property.

Alberta: An Edmonton man wanted for an offence committed in June has been arrested and charged with assault causing bodily harm. The 25-year-old allegedly boarded a public bus inebriated on June 3 and sucker-punched the driver when asked to refrain from singing. The attack was recorded and uploaded onto the Internet, where public tips eventually helped police identify the man.

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Death in Costa Rica’s rainforest

By Anthony A. Davis and Nicholas Köhler - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 8 Comments

The body of 53-year-old Canadian Kimberley Ann Blackwell was discovered on the morning of Feb. 2, high in the lush, hot, tropical rainforests of Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, where she had lived for almost 20 years. She had been shot the night before, execution-style, and lay sprawled on blood-soaked dirt near the gate to her home and cocoa farm. Maurico Valerin Jimenez, a 25-year-old warden with the Ministry of Environment and Energy, found her. “It was the first time I’d ever seen a body,” says Jimenez, who had arrived on Blackwell’s remote jungle property with several other wardens to begin a 15-km patrol of adjacent Corcovado National Park, a wonderland preserve of jaguars, monkeys, parrots and pumas.

Many locals here—especially campesinos, Costa Rica’s poor subsistence farmers—loathe the wardens, who interfere in a rural tradition of poaching and eating bush meat. “It’s Deliverance out there,” an expat friend of Blackwell’s says of the area, a densely treed, hilly region strung together by badly rutted roads and dotted with cattle, coffee and cocoa farms. For wardens like Jimenez, Blackwell’s property was a sanctuary. The animal lover had moved to the Osa, located just above Panama in southwest Costa Rica, 18 years earlier from the Yukon, and regularly let the wardens camp on her land, serving them coffee and soups. “It was like going to a restaurant,” says Jimenez.

Almost seven months after Blackwell’s death, authorities have still laid no charges in the slaying, even as rumours about why she was murdered and by whom multiply. The mystery of her death only deepens Blackwell’s mystique as a maverick among mavericks in the Osa, a gathering place for off-the-grid nonconformists who scrape refuge out of the untamed jungle and wild surf. Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century privateer, once buried treasure here. Among locals, Blackwell is every bit as much a legend—a fiery, uncompromising hippie who inspired deep loyalty in her friends despite a penchant for decking them during fits of rage.

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Trouble in 'paradise'

By Richard Foot - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 11:06 AM - 1 Comment

Donna Dingwell faced a mother’s unthinkable nightmare last month. As she made funeral arrangements following the murder on Jan. 17 of her eldest son Kyle, 25, she was also looking for a lawyer for his accused killer—her 22-year-old son Dylan. “Everyone really felt for this mother,” says Charlottetown’s deputy police chief Gary McGuigan. “She buried one son on Saturday and would be in court on Monday with the other, who was charged with second-degree murder.”

Kyle Dingwell’s murder not only shocked his family, it caused a profound stir across Prince Edward Island, where homicides are almost unheard of. For five of the past six years, Canada’s smallest province has had the country’s lowest homicide rate—zero—according to Statistics Canada. Police on P.E.I. have not undertaken a murder investigation since 2006, when a dairy plant worker deliberately ran down a former colleague with his car.

Murder cases everywhere make headlines, but news of the Dingwell killing spread fear and anger across P.E.I., and sparked a rash of unseemly Internet gossip, before any details of the murder became known. Comments on a Charlottetown newspaper website suggested the crime might be linked to the drug trade, or caused by “immigrants.”

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The spring water murder

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:05 PM - 0 Comments

A French woman is prison-bound after a poisonous battle between neighbours in the idyllic Quercy valley turned deadly over a pure source: a mountain spring splitting their properties. Hélène Issakhanian began her 12-year jail sentence last week for shooting her neighbour’s house guest at the height of the long-time feud. According to The Guardian, Issakhanian and her American husband, Robert, were attracted by the spring water river that flowed into a pond when they purchased their home in 1995. But when Thomas Nieste and his wife moved in next door in 2001, relations between the two couples quickly deteriorated, especially over the spring water that flowed between their properties.

Escalating physical aggression and death threats came to a head in August 2008 when Issakhanian knocked on the Niestes’ door after the water supply to her house was interrupted. After arguing with Johannes Van den Oudenhoven, a guest of the Niestes who had nothing to do with the feud, Issakhanian retrieved a pistol from her home and shot him in the head. After years of failed mediation, Didier Doriac, mayor of nearby Montcabrier, told reporters the crime was inevitable: “Everyone in the village knew it was going to come to this. There was nothing we could do.”

Murder and sex, Canadian-style

By Barbara Amiel - Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 7 Comments

The first murderer in my life was John George Haigh, also known as the acid bath murderer. While in prison for some lesser crime, he dreamed up the idea of dissolving bodies in sulphuric acid until they were sludge. Which he did during the late 1940s in Britain, pouring loads of it down manholes. His last victim was a 69-year-old widow living at a hotel in Kensington. Haigh liked the Persian lamb coat she wore and it was the cleaning ticket for it that helped track him down.

The British papers were rapturous about Haigh. There are no subjects that people read about more eagerly and deny reading about more readily than murder and sex—preferably in combination. When someone speaks of reading such a story, they proffer the waiting-room defence. Perhaps you are reading this very column while waiting for your dental checkup.

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Perspective alert

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at 9:06 AM - 25 Comments

Chris Selley runs the numbers on homicide.

Statistics Canada data show that in 2009, just 18.1% of “solved” homicides — meaning those in which a suspect was identified — were committed by someone unknown to the victim. That’s 82 murders, total. (If the same rate held true among unsolved homicides as well, the total number would be 110.) … There were 515 homicides in Canada in 2007. More likely ways to die included not just the traditional heart disease (50,499 deaths), suicide (3,611) and motor vehicle accidents (2,882) but such un-newsworthy occurrences as pneumonia (5,272), renal failure (3,664) falling down (2,677), poisoning (1,347) and skin cancer (875).

The canonization of John Lennon

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, November 22, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 4 Comments

Monday, Dec. 8, 1980. The last day in the life of John Lennon starts with a haircut, then a photo shoot for the cover of Rolling Stone. Annie Leibovitz, his upstairs neighbour at the Dakota, has him pose naked, curled around a clothed Yoko Ono. Outside, his born-again Christian killer, Mark David Chapman, waits on the sidewalk, the morning after spending his last night of freedom with a prostitute.

2:30 p.m. John and Yoko’s five-year-old son, Sean, appears with his nanny. “Oh, isn’t he a cute sweet boy,” says Chapman. The boy politely shakes his hand when it’s offered, the same hand that will soon cut down his father with a .38-calibre snub-nosed revolver—bought for $169 from a Japanese American whose surname happened to be Ono.

5 p.m. After a marathon radio interview, John and Yoko finally leave the Dakota and are stopped by Chapman, who asks Lennon to autograph a copy of his new album, Double Fantasy, handing him a black Bic pen. Lennon scrawls, “John Lennon 1980,” and as Yoko waits in the car, he lingers for a moment and asks, “Is that all you want?”

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Trying to end a murder spree

By Erica Alini - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Activists across the world are raising awareness about the dangers faced by Africa’s albino men and women. They have been the targets in a spate of gruesome killings that have left at least 71 dead since 2008 in Tanzania and Burundi (the actual number may be over 100). Murders have also been reported in Kenya, Uganda and Swaziland; victims are usually found dismembered, as killers sell their body parts, which some African witches claim have magical healing powers. African governments have responded with severe sentences for murders, stricter monitoring of traditional healers, or plans to set up registries for albinos, as Swaziland announced in October.

And the international community is working to fight widespread ignorance about albinism, a medical condition that leaves people without pigment in their skin, hair, and eyes. UKAid in the British Department of International Development recently financed the production of Hawa ni Wenzetu (“they are like us”), a 55-minute documentary on albinos that seeks to dispel prejudice and superstitions about them. Last year, the Red Cross teamed up with Salif Keita, a popular Malian singer who is himself albino, to launch an appeal for better protection of albinos.

The prince and his manservant

By Leah McLaren - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Last week at the Old Bailey courthouse, a prince was jailed for life.

Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud, 34-year-old grandson to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and a member of one of the richest and most powerful families in the world, was convicted of murdering his manservant in what Crown prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw described as “a really terrible, a really brutal attack.” It took place last February, when Bandar Abdulaziz, 32, was found beaten and strangled to death in a room at the five-star Landmark hotel in the upscale central London district of Marylebone. At the time, Saud co-operated fully with police, appearing “shocked and upset” at the death of his companion who, testimony revealed, often slept on the floor at the foot of his bed like a faithful dog. But during the October trial, a different story emerged.

The prince was revealed as a decadent playboy involved in a sadistic sexual relationship with Abdulaziz, a poor orphan—one so psychologically oppressed he did not even put up a fight to save his own life. While a post-mortem revealed Abdulaziz died with chipped teeth, split lips, a fractured rib and severe injuries to his head and internal organs, the prince had not a mark on him. The victim also had strange bite marks on both cheeks, which the prosecution argued were proof (in addition to sexually explicit photos of Abdulaziz on the prince’s phone) that the abuse had “an obvious sexual connotation.”

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Interpret according to the political ideology of your choosing

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 10:38 AM - 0 Comments

Statistics Canada releases new figures on homicide.

The latest homicide study released Tuesday by Statistics Canada shows there were 179 firearm-related killings in 2009, 21 fewer than the previous year. Most of them involved handguns which are tightly controlled in Canada … Stabbings (36 per cent) and shootings (30 per cent) were the most common forms of homicide in 2009 and, as in previous years, a “large majority” of victims knew their assailants. That said, the number of people killed by a stranger last year jumped 17 per cent …

Of the 253 firearms used to kill between 2005 and 2009, 69 per cent were found not to be registered, while 31 per cent were — the bulk of them rifles or shotguns, which fall under the controversial long-gun registry.

Liveblog: Col. Russell Williams pleads guilty

By Michael Friscolanti and Cathy Gulli - Monday, October 18, 2010 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

A gifted pilot and respected leader, Russell Williams was a rising star in the Canadian air force, an elite officer who ferried prime ministers and the Queen and was later awarded the top job at the country’s largest and busiest airbase. But when he took command of CFB Trenton in July 2009, the colonel was harbouring a dark secret that—even now, with confirmation of a guilty plea—is difficult to believe: he was a serial sexual predator who stalked his female victims, broke into dozens of homes, and stole hundreds of bras, panties, and other perverted “trophies.”

By the time police figured out the truth—seven months into his stint as 8 Wing commander—Williams’ twisted crime spree had escalated from fetish burglaries to sexual assault to the brutal slayings of two innocent women: Marie-France Comeau, a 38-year-old corporal stationed at his base; and Jessica Lloyd, 27, of Belleville, Ont.

On Monday morning, the 47-year-old colonel will stand inside the bulletproof prisoners’ box of a Belleville courtroom—just a short drive from the base he once commanded—and plead guilty to 88 criminal charges, including two counts of first-degree murder, two counts each of sexual assault and forcible confinement, and 82 offences linked to his bizarre lingerie burglaries. Maclean’s will be liveblogging from inside the courthouse, providing up-to-the-minute coverage as the hearing unfolds.

[4:12 PM]

On Aug. 2, 2009, Williams stripped naked, walked to the house two doors down from his cottage, and broke in. He didn’t steal anything or take any photos. Still naked, he walked back to his cottage.

[4:02 PM]

On July 10, 2009—just five days before he was sworn in as the commander of CFB Trenton—Williams spent half an hour in a backyard near his Tweed, Ont., cottage, staring through a window at a woman inside. When the woman climbed into the shower, Williams stripped naked, ran inside the house, and stole a black pair of underwear from the bedroom. He later told police that he was tempted to go in the bathroom and steal the underwear the woman just took off, but decided that was too “risky.” 

[3:25 PM]

Crown prosecutors are up to Count 59, and the details are shocking. Even before he assaulted two women and murdered two others, Williams was a serial sexual predator obsessed with stealing—and wearing—female undergarments. In one case, he stole underwear from a 12-year-old girl, and then left a one-word message on the computer in her bedroom: “Merci.” In another house—which he robbed on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day 2009—he photographed himself rubbing a girl’s make-up brush on his penis. “There is nothing in the evidence to suggest the make-up brush was stolen,” said prosecutor Robert Morrison. “It was left there to be used again.” The Crown has unveiled dozens of sample photographs, many of them showing Williams posing and masturbating in his victims’ lingerie. He has remained stone-faced and silent through it all, rarely lifting his head to look at the TV screens displaying his photo shoots. 

[2:01 PM]
The lunch break is over and Williams is being escorted—hands and legs cuffed—back to his seat in the prisoner’s box. A police officer is sitting on either side.

[11:16]
Only now, eight months after his arrest, is the full story of Russell Williams being revealed. In painstaking detail, prosecutors plan to show portions of the photographic and video evidence relating to each of his 88 crimes. So far, they have gone through only two of the counts: Williams’ first break-ins, at the house next door to his cottage in Tweed, Ont. Two large-screen TVs at the front of the courtroom are displaying some of the photographs, including Williams dressed in underwear belonging to the 12-year-old girl who lives in the house. In some of the photographs, Williams erect penis can be seen protruding from the girls’ underwear. He stole some of the items he wore, but left some behind.

[10:39 AM]
The clerk reads the two charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement in connection with the home-invasion attacks against Laurie Massicotte and another woman, whose name is protected by a publication ban.

[10:13 AM]
The court clerk is now reading each of the individual break-and-enter charges linked to Williams. There are 82 in all, and will take some time to get through. Williams is still standing, his eyes glued to the floor as the clerk continues reading.

[10:07 AM]
Williams is ordered to stand so the charges against him can be officially read into the court record. The murder of Marie-France Comeau is the first charge read. “How do you plead?” the court clerk asked. “Guilty, your honour,” Wiliams answered, in a soft voice. The murder of Jessica Lloyd is the next charge read. Again, Williams pleads guilty.

[9:59 AM]
Russell Williams is now inside the courtroom. After being escorted to the prisoners’ box, an OPP officer removed his handcuffs and walked away as his lawyer, Michael Edelson, approached for a brief chat with his client. The disgraced colonel is dressed in a grey blazer, and did not make eye contact with anyone in the gallery.

[9:51 AM]
Relatives of Russell Williams’ many victims have begun to take their seats inside the coutroom. A section of the gallery has been reserved for them, and boxes of Kleenex have been left on the benches. Laurie Massicotte, one of Williams’ two sexual assault victims, is here with two of her daughters. Friends and relatives of Williams’ two murder victims—Cpl. Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd—are also making their way inside the coutroom.

[7:57 AM)
The doors to Courtroom 303 are open, and journalists are beginning to file in. Outside, a team of tactical officers from the Ontario Provincial Police are awaiting Col. Williams’ arrival.

Surviving Colonel Williams

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 20 Comments

Laurie Massicotte watches the same two television programs before bed: Law & Order at 11 p.m., and Without a Trace at midnight. On that Tuesday evening last September, she followed her typical routine, curling up on the living room couch with an apple, the remote control, and one of her daughters’ old Barbie blankets. Within 15 minutes, she was fast asleep. “It was a busy day,” she says now, one year later. “I spent most of it cleaning: bringing in pots from the yard, rearranging furniture in the basement. I was exhausted.”

When she woke up in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Massicotte remembers two specific things: hearing the theme song for the final credits of Without a Trace, and being smothered under her blanket as someone on the other side delivered punch after punch to her face. In those first few seconds, the 46-year-old was so disoriented and so short of breath that she assumed the house was on fire, and that thick smoke had filled her eyes and lungs. She soon realized the terrifying truth. “Shhh,” said the intruder, in between blows to the head. “I need you to be quiet.”

What transpired over the next 3½ hours was pure terror. Home alone, Massicotte was blindfolded, shackled, stripped naked with the sharp edge of a knife, and forced to pose for dozens of unthinkable photographs before the stranger in her house finally fled. Every time he ordered her to sit this way or lean that way, his threat was the same: “Don’t make me make you.”

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Same story, different ending

By Aneela Batool - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 2:50 PM - 17 Comments

Three years ago it was 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez who was murdered. Twenty years ago it might have been me. The circumstances were different but we both refused unconditional submission. I survived. Aqsa was killed by her father and brother in a brutal act committed under the guise of family honour.

Aqsa was strangled in 2007 in her family home in Mississauga, Ont. Three years later, in 2010, my husband and I emigrated from Pakistan to Canada. We, too, settled in Mississauga. It was six months after our move, with my daughter just graduating from Grade 8 and looking forward to her first summer in Canada, when I suddenly came upon the terrible story of Aqsa Parvez.

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Colonel Williams’ wife, under attack

By Michael Friscolanti and Cathy Gulli, with Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 9:52 AM - 321 Comments

On July 15, 2009, an hour before Col. Russell Williams was sworn in as the new boss of CFB Trenton, a two-seater jet skidded off the air base runway and smashed through a fence.

The plane, a 1950s-era Canadian Forces Silver Star, was being delivered to a private buyer in the U.S. when something went wrong during takeoff, forcing the pilot to abort.

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Five hanged in Tehran

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 9:46 AM - 4 Comments

I was out of the office when this atrocity took place. I’d be remiss, however, not to bring it to your attention even a week late. The five activists were murdered at Evin Prison, where Canadian Zahra Kazemi spent her last days alive. Four were Kurds. A widespread strike in protest of the executions shut down many of the Kurdish towns and cities in northwest Iran.

Mercy or murder?

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 8:18 PM - 27 Comments

Capt. Robert Semrau is facing a military court-martial—and the possibility of life behind bars—for allegedly executing a severely wounded Taliban fighter. According to the prosecution’s version of events, the 36-year-old was bound by both international law and the Canadian Forces Code of Conduct to administer First Aid, but decided to fire two bullets into the man’s chest instead.

From the comfort of a courtroom in Gatineau, Que.—where tracer fire isn’t flying and flak jackets aren’t required—the Crown’s case seems simple enough. Mercy killing, regardless of the circumstances, is strictly forbidden, and the rules of engagement clearly state that medical care must be provided to every casualty, friend or foe. But as the latest witness made abundantly clear, the heat of battle has a way of messing with the best-laid plans.

Warrant Officer Merlin Longaphie, Semrau’s second-in-command during their Afghanistan tour, testified Tuesday that he saw the unidentified Talib shortly before the captain’s fateful encounter. Like Semrau, Longaphie was part of an Operational Mentor Liaison Team (OMLT) assigned to advise members of the rag-tag Afghan National Army, and on the morning of Oct. 19, 2008, they were conducting a major sweep through Taliban territory in Helmand Province. Under fire from enemy insurgents, Longaphie and his unit had just finished sprinting to safety across a large cornfield when he noticed a commotion 25 meters to his right. “It appeared to me there was a body on the ground,” he said on the witness stand. “Some other Afghans, two or three, were looking at the body and lightly kicking it.”

Capt. Thomas Fitzgerald, one of the prosecutors, wanted to know why Longaphie didn’t rush to treat the man—reminding him of his legal obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the military’s code of conduct. “If the person on the ground back there was a Canadian soldier, would you have done something different?” Fitzgerald asked.

After an angry objection from Semrau’s lawyer, Fitzgerald rephrased the question. “Why didn’t you move closer?”

“At the time I didn’t think there was a need to go over there,” Longaphie answered. “Visually, from what I perceived, it was a dead Taliban and there was no reason for me to go over and confirm whether he was dead or alive.”

Two other men—a private under Semrau’s command and an Afghan interpreter named “Max”—have told military prosecutors that the mangled enemy fighter was indeed breathing, and that the captain put him out of his misery. Longaphie didn’t witness the alleged crime; he had moved on from the scene by the time Semrau supposedly aimed his C-8 at the man’s heart. But if nothing else, his testimony was a poignant reminder that combat is not court, and just because the rules dictate that every injured foe must be treated, that doesn’t mean it happens.

Whether that helps Capt. Semrau remains to be seen. Failing to double-check a supposed dead body is one thing. Pumping two rounds into an unarmed man is quite another.

The government claims that Semrau subscribes to a so-called “soldier’s pact”—an unwritten code that says if he is too maimed to be saved, it’s up to a fellow warrior to put him to ease his pain and finish the job. If prosecutors are correct, Semrau extended that pact to the enemy, using it as an excuse to execute. “No one should suffer like that,” he allegedly told one subordinate.

This is the first time a Canadian soldier has been accused of homicide on the battlefield. He faces four charges in all, including second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole or ten years.

A father of two young daughters, Semrau has pleaded not guilty to all counts. His trial continues Wednesday morning.

The dead spy and the oligarch

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

More than four years after Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned with radioactive polonium-210, the drama surrounding his mysterious death in Britain continues. On March 10, Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky won a libel suit in London against Russian state television, which claimed he masterminded the killing.

Berezovsky lives in Britain after being granted political asylum in 2003. He is wanted on a variety of charges by Moscow, which Kremlin opponents see as attempts to discredit and ultimately silence an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The current court case was launched after a 2007 story aired by Russia’s state TV claimed Litvinenko was murdered on orders from the billionaire because he had witnessed a drugged man make a false statement that bolstered Berezovsky’s claim for asylum.

The billionaire vehemently denied the charges, stating that, in fact, Litvinenko, a former spy turned Putin critic, had saved his life on more than one occasion. “He had helped me and I him,” Berezovsky testified. “Fundamentally, we shared the same enemy.” Litvinenko’s widow, Maria, backed Berezovsky in court: “I knew that the accusation against Boris was propaganda.” While Russian TV refused to defend itself in the libel case, several state prosecutors helped the defence of the media firm’s co-accused, Vladimir Terluk, who had claimed Berezovsky drugged him.

In the end, Justice David Eady ruled definitively for Berezovsky and awarded him $230,000. “I can say unequivocally that there is no evidence before me that Mr. Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr. Litvinenko,” Eady stated. “Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it.”

British investigators have long since come to the same conclusion. In 2007, they requested the Kremlin extradite former Russian spy Andrei Lugovoi, a Putin ally, to stand trial for Litvinenko’s murder. Moscow refused.

A call for justice from Bangladesh

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 2:27 PM - 21 Comments

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was 27 years old when her father, the first prime minister of Bang­ladesh, was slaughtered along with most of her family in 1975. The army officers who shot them installed a military government and kicked off 15 years of coups, counter-coups, and dictatorship. Hasina, who was out of the country at the time of the massacre, has long sought justice for her family. In January, five former soldiers convicted of the murders were hanged in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, following a lengthy legal process. Six of the convicted men are still at large. At least one of them, Nur Chowdhury, lives in Canada.

Bangladesh has repeatedly requested that Canada extradite Chowdhury, whose refugee application has been rejected in this country. But Canada has so far refused, because Chowdhury has been sentenced to death in Bangladesh. Canada typically will not transfer a suspected criminal to a foreign country without a guarantee that he will not be executed. “He is a citizen of Bangladesh, and according to the rule of law, he got the death sentence,” said Hasina, in an exclusive interview with Maclean’s. “Justice should be done and the rule of law implemented, not only for my family, but for the people of Bangladesh.”

Hasina said that this dispute will not negatively affect relations between Canada and Bangladesh. Canada is an advocate for human rights, she said. She understands Ottawa’s motives. “But these killers violated human rights,” she said. “They killed women and children. So why should [Canada] keep him? If they want to keep the killers, we can send all the killers of this country to take shelter in Canada and other countries.”

The two faces of Col. Russell Williams (VIDEO)

By Tom Henheffer, Martin Patriquin, and Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 9:35 PM - 60 Comments

Years before Col. Russell Williams was an accused double murderer, he was a rookie instructor at the Canadian Forces flying school in Portage la Prairie, Man. He was such a standout in the cockpit that his boss, Major Greg McQuaid, selected him for the farewell flight of “Musket Gold,” a now-defunct air force demonstration team that peaked in the 1970s. “I handpicked him because of his skill,” McQuaid told Maclean’s. “I knew he would do a good job. I liked the guy, he was sharp, and he had all the characteristics of a good military officer and a good pilot.”

It was 1992, and the four-man team spent two months training for the big finale, practicing turns and formations in their bright yellow, single-engine TC-134s. Musket Gold’s last hurrah was captured on VHS video, and it was Russ Williams, then a young lieutenant, who edited the footage, added some background music, and gave it to his fellow flyers as a keepsake. When McQuaid first heard about the shocking charges against his old friend—two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of sexual assault—he immediately thought of that old VHS tape. “He showed no indication that he could do something like this—zero, absolutely none,” he says. “He fit in well and got along well with everybody, and was respected by everybody.”

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Where will he land?

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 6 Comments

The exact timeline is still sketchy, but at some point in the coming weeks, a blindfolded Omar Khadr will be escorted out of his jail cell, shackled at the wrists and ankles, and carried onto a military cargo plane. Though he won’t have the pleasure of witnessing it with his own eyes, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—Khadr’s prison for the past seven years, beginning at the tender age of 16—will disappear into the distance within a matter of minutes.

Where he will land is still a mystery. The White House announced last week that the 23-year-old is slated to face a military commission—somewhere on U.S. soil—for his alleged war crimes, including the murder of an American soldier in Afghanistan. Yet in the very same breath, Barack Obama’s attorney general left open the possibility that Khadr, a Canadian citizen, could be transferred to his home country before a trial ever begins. Fuelling such speculation is a separate hearing in front of the Supreme Court of Canada, which must decide, once and for all, whether Stephen Harper should be forced to at least ask the Americans to repatriate Khadr. The legal arguments are complex, but at the heart of the case is a growing sense that if the Prime Minister simply asked for his release, Washington would happily oblige.

In other words, that plane leaving Gitmo could fly straight to Canada.

It’s not quite that simple, of course. The Supreme Court may not issue a ruling until the new year, and even if it does order Harper to bite his lip and lobby for Khadr, there is no guarantee the Americans will hand him over carte blanche. But for a boy (now man) who has grown up inside Gitmo’s barbed wire, the end has never felt so close. Which means the biggest question of all—the one Harper is fighting in court to avoid—must now be answered: if Omar does return to Canada, what exactly do we do with him?

“I’m not going to argue that he hasn’t served enough time, but I might argue that he’s still a threat,” says Layne Morris, a retired U.S. army sergeant who lost his right eye in the 2002 firefight that ended with Khadr’s capture. “It comes down to security. Are we confident we can let this guy go and he’s not going to try to cut people’s throats next week? That’s the overwhelming question.”

There is no easy answer. To many, Khadr is still the loyal son of a senior al-Qaeda operative, a Toronto-born teenager who lived with Osama bin Laden and allegedly tossed a grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a decorated Special Forces medic. To others, he is an innocent child soldier thrust into battle by his radical dad and tortured, over and over, until he confessed to a crime he didn’t commit. It’s no wonder the feds would rather let someone else (i.e., the Americans) figure out which label fits best.

If he is flown back to Canada, Khadr could—at least theoretically—face a bevy of criminal charges, including high treason (“waging war” against an army allied with Canada) and participation in a terrorist organization (al-Qaeda). But would a jury ever convict someone who was shot by U.S. troops at age 15, shipped to the world’s most notorious prison at 16, and who was clearly under the spell of his fundamentalist father? Even with a guilty verdict, it’s hard to imagine his young age would warrant a sentence other than time served.

The other option—allowing Khadr to reunite with his extremist family, where he is sure to become a folk hero for wannabe jihadists—is equally unattractive. His sister once wished she had “the guts” to be a suicide bomber, his eldest brother is an accused al-Qaeda gunrunner, and another brother is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by Pakistani troops in the same clash that killed their father. The Cleavers they are not.

“Omar has been branded by the family,” says Dennis Edney, that family’s long-time lawyer. “When you talk about the Khadr brand, there is no distinction. But I have talked to Omar about not going back to his family, and Omar understands that and has agreed to that—and his family has agreed to that.” (Members of the family did not respond to emails from Maclean’s.)

Earlier this year, Edney released a so-called “reintegration plan” for his client that includes religious and psychological counselling, supervision by law enforcement officials, and a home-schooling program delivered by King’s University College in Edmonton. “I would take him home with me, in Alberta,” Edney says. “He’s just a kid who wants to be a doctor and who wants to just get on with his life. I’ve never met a more peaceful guy.”

It’s a difficult description to swallow; fellow Canadians have seen the infamous video of a young Omar smiling as he wires together land mines destined for the feet of coalition soldiers. Stephen Xenakis, a U.S. psychiatrist who has treated Khadr over the past year, has his own opinions about whether his patient is still a threat to society. And although he would prefer to save those opinions for a possible day in court, he does offer this much: “He is a really kind, decent, thoughtful, sensitive young man, and he cares about people. It’s really important to appreciate that he does not have any vindictiveness in his nature at all. There is not a hard edge to him at all, and there is no sense of vengeance.”

What Khadr wants, Xenakis says, is “fair justice.” Speer’s widow and two young children crave the very same thing.

Dogs are victims in a scary war

By Barbara Amiel - Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 36 Comments

Looking at life from a dog’s point of view can refocus matters great and small. Take the Berlin Wall, which crumbled 20 years ago. Thousands of dogs policed that wall and just like that they were all out of a job—some 7,000 of them, apparently. The guard dog of choice was the Caucasian ovcharka, which coincidentally is a dog I hope to add to my two Hungarian kuvaszok if I am up to it. Some people rescue homeless dogs; I look for native East European breeds who share in an ersatz Jewish identity to this extent: in that part of the world, historically speaking, someone will try and do them in.

The wall fell and West Berliners feared packs of ovcharkas storming into the city. Given the dog’s size (up to 90 kg) and its heritage—tearing the throats out of wolves and escapees alike—I can’t blame them. Just a month earlier, after brutally repressing demonstrations before the October visit of Mikhail Gorbachev to East Berlin and fearing more, the murderous Stasi chief Eric Mielke stated, “I will now . . . show that our authority still has teeth . . . [demonstrators] are cowardly dogs . . . they will run like rabbits as soon as they’ve seen our dogs.” Continue…

An eerie short story gets even eerier

By Cathy Gulli - Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 2 Comments

Readers disturbed by Alice Munro’s haunting short story “Dimensions”—in which a father kills his three children—can’t take comfort in the fact that it’s fiction. There are eerie similarities between the story and a criminal trial under way in British Columbia involving Allan Schoenborn, who is charged with the first-degree murders in April 2008 of his daughter and two sons.

The parallels are stunning: the manic disposition of the fathers; the way the children died and the reasons why; the mothers’ devastating discoveries; and a wretched claim by both men that the deceased appeared to them. The resemblance is startling to journalist Bill Richardson, who hosted an International Festival of Authors event in Toronto with Munro. She admitted that “Dimensions” is the only story in her recently published book, Too Much Happiness, that she can’t reread, though it’s unclear why. Munro acknowledged the similarities, Richardson told Maclean’s in an email, but noted that violence against children is not so unusual. Continue…

Bringing albino-killers to justice

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 19 Comments

In the past two years, 53 albinos have been killed in Tanzania. No one has been brought to justice for committing these murders. Until now.

Last Wednesday, a Tanzanian court sentenced three men to death for killing a 14-year-old albino boy, Matatizo Dunia from Shinyanga, in brutal fashion—they kidnapped him, then cut his body into pieces. An equally barbaric case is also garnering national attention: Mariam Emmanuel, a five-year-old girl, was butchered by a group of machete-wielding men in Mwanza. The culprits divided the girl’s body up among themselves and drank her blood while her siblings watched. Murdered albinos are usually sold at high prices to witch doctors, who grind up the body parts and brew them into potions that they believe carry magic powers. Continue…