[IPSM] Thirteen guilty in Mohawk trial

Mon Oct 31 03:58:29 PST 2005

 sorry folks, at the bottom is an accurate list of who was found guilty of what... Monday » October 31 » 2005 

      Thirteen guilty in Mohawk trial
      Kanesatake unrest. Four women, ex-cop exit with acquittals

            JEFF HEINRICH 
            The Gazette 

      Sunday, October 30, 2005

      Finally, a verdict.

      A jury yesterday reached a split verdict in the $1-million trial of 18 Mohawks and a non-Indian accused of rioting and forcibly confining 67 aboriginal police officers and special constables in Kanesatake in January 2004.

      The verdict came after four days of deliberating in seclusion over a month's worth of testimony. The 12-person jury found seven Mohawk men guilty on both charges, and convicted five other Mohawk men, as well as one non-aboriginal Kanesatake man, on the lesser charge of unlawful assembly.

      Quebec Superior Court Judge Nicole Duval Hesler is to hear the Crown's sentencing arguments Dec. 13. Rioting carries a maximum sentence of two years in jail; forcible confinement, 10 years; and unlawful assembly, six months.

      "There's a panoply of possible sentences we could ask for," Crown prosecutor Pierre Teasdale said after the morning verdict. Sentences could range from jail terms to community work to fines, depending on each person's involvement and previous criminal convictions.

      In an unusual move after the verdict, Hesler told the convicted Mohawks she'll look favourably in sentencing on any effort they now make to reconcile with their adversaries in Kanesatake.

      Six others who were on trial - including all four Mohawk women in the case and an ex-Kanesatake police officer - were acquitted on both charges of rioting and forcible confinement.

      The verdict was a mixed bag for the Mohawks. In the trial, they had argued their collective actions on Jan. 12-14, 2004 - however unruly - amounted simply to a legal protest against something they had a duty to defend against: a secretly-conceived police operation that was essentially an illegal assault on their sovereign community.

      Their lawyers said yesterday they will probably ask for leave to appeal all 13 convictions within the next 30 days, on the grounds Hesler did not properly instruct the jury on the charges before sending them to start deliberating last Tuesday.

      "I think, for everyone, the verdict is bittersweet," said Daniel Lighter, one of five lawyers defending the Mohawks. The protest "was very much a group reaction to what they perceived as an unlawful trespass on their territory. ... They feel that they did the right thing, that they didn't go overboard."

      After the verdict, those who had been on trial unfurled a Warrior Society flag and took group photographs of each other on the steps outside the St. Jerome provincial courthouse.

      "We're still winners," said Robert Gabriel, one of the Mohawks convicted on the rioting and confinement charges.

      The verdict delighted former Kanesatake Grand Chief James Gabriel, who had approved the Jan. 12, 2004, police operation and whose house was burned down during the riot that night.

      The two suspects in the arson - Joey Daye and Debbie Etienne - were among the 19 accused in the riot case; Daye was found guilty of unlawful assembly, Etienne was acquitted. Their separate trials for arson, originally slated for next week, have been put off until late April, 2006.

      "Obviously, I'm very satisfied that the key figures in the riot have been found guilty - we always knew they were," Gabriel said yesterday from Kanesatake, where, after more than a year in exile in Ontario, he now lives again with his wife and two sons, in a house near the ruins of his old one. "The verdict sends a message that no one is above the law."

      Gabriel added that those on trial had helped bring current Grand Chief Steven Bonspille to power in elections last summer, and that the conviction of 13 of them "kicks his legs out from under him. He won't have that power behind him anymore." Bonspille did not return calls for comment.

      The trial was big, long and expensive - more than $1 million, lead defence lawyer Jeff Boro estimated. The highest costs: $300,000 in fees to Quebec legal aid to the five lawyers who defended the accused; the high salaries of the judge and two Crown prosecutors for three months spent on the case; $54,000 to interview 400 potential jurors before the trial; and court costs including lengthy police videotape transfers to CD-ROM for airing in court and voluminous daily transcripts of all testimony for the jury, judge and lawyers to consult.

      The case was complicated, though the basic facts were well-documented.

      The 19 suspects were charged after 67 Mohawk, Cree, Inuit and other Quebec aboriginal police officers and special constables spent 36 hours holed up in the Kanesatake police station from Jan. 12 to 14, 2004, while the accused and other protesters kept watch in the parking lot outside.

      The police had come on a special mission - secretly approved by Gabriel and his three allies on Kanesatake's seven-member band council, and funded with a $900,000 federal grant - to demote police chief Tracy Cross, patrol the community and start investigating alleged drug-related organized crime.

      They never got further than the police station. In the early hours of Jan. 14, they were escorted off the territory by Kahnawake Peacekeepers, who had been brought in under a deal brokered with Quebec's Public Security Department.

      Kanesatake then went through months of turmoil, with Gabriel trying to govern from the outside, Kanesatake's own police force unable to patrol inside and Gabriel's opponents trying to run the community their own way.

      The Surete du Quebec now sporadically patrols the community. Ottawa and Quebec continue to pay Kanesatake's $9-million annual budget, which is managed through a trustee, PricewaterhouseCoopers, because of big recurrent deficits the fractious community can't seem to shake.

      About 1,400 people - mostly Mohawks but also some non-aboriginals - live in and around Kanesatake, which sits on the north shore of the Lake of Two Mountains near Oka, 50 kilometres west of Montreal.

      jheinrich at thegazette.canwest.com

      The Kanesatake 19

      Found guilty of rioting and forcible confinement are:

      Robert Gabriel, who has a criminal record from an assault against James, his cousin, in 2001; Gary Gabriel, Robert's brother and a well-known Kanesatake cigarette retailer; Gordon Lazore, a Warrior Society member known as "Noriega" with a criminal record stemming from 1990 Oka Crisis; Kahnawake resident Brad Gabriel, a software developer; Hubert Nelson; Alistair Nicolas; and Terry Yaxley.

      Found guilty of unlawful assembly were: Robert and Gary's uncle, Milton Gabriel, who is also Brad's father; Stuart Conway; Joey Daye; Keith Cree; T. Nelson McDonald; and one Kanesatake non-aboriginal, Francois Pinsonneault.

      Acquitted were: Bertha Bonspille, Robert Gabriel's wife; Nancy Gabriel, Robert's sister; Sonya Gagnier, a former Kanesatake police commissioner; Mark Delisle, a former Kanesatake Mohawk police officer; Debbie Etienne; and Angus Nelson, T. Nelson McDonald's father.

      © The Gazette (Montreal) 2005

      Copyright © 2005 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
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