View topic - Gun Law used to harass politiclly unpopular author :: Free Dominion - Principled Conservative - Party and Canadian Politics

I didn't know whether to place this piece under the guns form or the media form at first....but after some considered thought on this disturbing matter I placed it in the media file because, although I feel the right to self defense and self preservasion is critical to a healthy and civil constitutional society, many cannot relate the gun issue to this basic revelation.

They can however, get disturbed when they see free speech and the truth being openly repressed by the goons of the anti-constitutional state.....perhaps some of the sharper readers will connect the dots and see that the right to self defense as expressed by the right to of a civilian to own and keep firearms is directly connected to other important rights.....like free speech, freedom of the press, freedom from un resonable police harassment, property rights, security and privacy etc.

When the civil right to own and access the means of self defense is removed (as it has been in Canada for all intent and purpose) this is a bellwether that other fundamental civil rights are under attack by an aggressive, increasingly oppressive state. In Williams' case, we see the danger of laws that allow for unrestrained and unaccountable "discretionary" power by petty bureaucrats will always be abused to suit the advancement/ expansion of the state and repress the rights of the individual. In this case the only "crime" acted upon by unlimited bureaucratic "disrection" was Wiliams' criticism of the state.

BTW: This is the 4th such incident I'm aware of where the sweeping "discretionary" powers in the draconian liberal gun law was used to stage raids meant to intimidate people who have been vocal aginst the authorities. [WLM]

Criticize the State at Your Peril
By Christopher di Armani

A short news article in Saturday, July 3, 2004's National Post read "Weapons charges against Bernardo author dropped."

That's what caught my attention. The article was light on details, relating only that charges of careless storage of a shotgun and rifle were being dropped. The firearms charges stemmed from a raid on his home in the summer of 2003.

So I was curious. Why was a writer's home raided? And why firearms charges?

So I started researching the case. An internet search for "Stephen Williams" led me to some interesting archives of his long battle with the Ontario Justice Department.

As I read through the material, one thing became quite clear. This man, this author, this member of the press, had been continually and systematically harassed by a justice department because they did NOT like what Williams wrote.

As his lawyer, Edward Greenspan said, "I keep asking myself, had he written a book showering praise on the authorities, would he ever have been in a court of law? I doubt it."

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression published a paper entitled "The Case of Stephen Williams: Secret Publication Bans, Selective Prosecution and Prosecutorial Conflict of Interest.

In that paper they say "…the case of author Stephen Williams dramatically underscores the need for all Canadians to push for changes to laws and court practices to ensure that nobody in this country can be jailed because Crown prosecutors don't like the contents of his or her book."

I guess if we're going to send grain farmers to jail for selling their own grain, it's no big stretch to send writers to jail for writing.

But what exactly did Mr. Williams write that was so offensive to the State?

His two books on the Bernardo/Homolka murder case containing scathing condemnations of the authorities' handling of that case.

Williams' legal troubles began immediately following columnist Heather Bird's January 6th column, in which she quoted Williams as saying he had viewed the videotape of Bernardo raping his victims Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.

There was a court order banning any such access to the tapes.
Court bans on evidence/proceedure=soviet star chamber repression of public information

Williams, in a faxed demand for a retraction to the Sun, denied ever viewing the tapes.

The Ontario Attorney General announced a police investigation into Williams on January 7, 1998. The probe into the possible violation of the publication ban by Stephen Williams started the next day.

The real problem seems to be summed up by Niagra Regional Police Superintendant Vince Bevan, who headed the Bernardo investigation. In a in a January 7, 1998 London Free Press article by Brad Honywill, Bevan said:

"We went to great lengths to protect that material… It Mr. Williams did view these tapes, we need to identify the source."

The State had a burning desire to know WHO Williams' source was. Williams was offered immunity from prosecution. All he had to do was name his source or sources. In an October 12, 1998 Toronto Star article, Williams, of course, refused.

"A journalist should not be required under any circumstances to reveal sources…nor be subject to undue harassment on the issue of sources."

Ten months later the investigation was still underway. In a letter asking the justice minister to intervene on his behalf, an upset Williams wrote then-Justice Minister Anne McLellan "No one, and I mean no one, will talk to an investigative journalist who is himself under police investigation."

There is no record of McLellan responding to Williams.

On December 3, 1998, eleven months after the investigation started, Williams appeared in court to plead not guilty to two counts of breaching a court order issued in the Paul Bernardo trial.

The reason for the charges against Williams seems clear. He made the police and prosecutors look bad in print. And they were not about to stand for that.

It took two years and many thousands of dollars to defend himself, but author Stephen Williams finally found himself out from under the legal grindstone. The Crown had stayed all charges against him.

In a November 30, 2000 Canadian Press article Crown attorney Paul Tayler said, "It is the position of the Crown in this unique case and in these unique circumstances that the case must be discontinued for the public good."

So a year-long investigation, coupled with a year-long legal battle culminates in the authorities dropping all charges.

Taylor held up the standard political mantra "the public good" as he dropped the charges. However, the real reason is probably he had no stomach for viewing the tapes of the Mahaffy and French murders, nor for telling the families the horrific tapes were going to be viewed in court yet again.

"It is the Crown's position that is not in the public's interest to cause the families further anguish", he said in the November 30 Canadian Press article.

So why was it necessary to waste all that taxpayer money in the first place? Anyone with half a brain, let alone a law degree, could have told them the tapes would be required by the defence. You know, that silly bit where our legal system insists the accused being able to examine ALL aspects of the case against him?

In praising the Crown's decision to drop the case, Williams' lawyer Edward Greenspan, in a January 12, 200 Toronto Star article, said, "At the centre of this case was the risk that for the very first time in our long and great history, a writer could face going to jail for the crime of merely writing. That is something one sees in Iraq, Iran or China. It is not something we should ever tolerate in a free and democratic society."

"Writing a book can never be a crime in a free and democratic society."

Williams maintains that he was harassed and prosecuted for his criticism of police mishandling of the case.

"They bungled it and they don't like to read about it," he said in the Toronto Star article.

But that was not the end of Williams' legal troubles. Sadly, it was only the end of the first chapter.

Police started another probe into Williams after the publication of his second book on the case, "Karla: A Pact with the Devil". Not content to have their first prosecution go amiss, the police obviously felt a deep and abiding desire to "get even".

They were aided in their vendetta by Williams himself. In an April 30, 2003 Toronto Star article, Williams said he would post everything he had on the Bernado/Homolka case on the internet.

"It is a formidable archive, and getting it out of my possession and into cyberspace will be a truly cathartic experience."

Cathartic or not, on May 4, 2003 Williams was arrested. But not until after police executed a search warrant on his home early on that Sunday morning.

In what has apparently become standard police procedure when harassing the citizenry, Ontario Provincial Police executed their search warrant for Williams' Harriston Ontario home at 6am, May 4, 2003.

As a result of the Sunday arrest, Stephen Williams was forced to spend the night in jail. Bail hearings happen only Monday to Friday. This was no accident. Tossing Wiliams in jail for the night was their intention.

This vile criminal, this writer, obviously needed to be taught a lesson, and the police were happy to oblige.

Williams' lawyer, Edward Greenspan, had harsh words for police and prosecutors in a July 19, 2003 Toronto Star article:

"Never in my experience has a Canadian author been treated like this by the authorities. And it looks like the crime is that he wrote things that were unfavourable to the authorities."

There was no excuse for executing the warrant at 6am on a Sunday morning, let alone dragging the author off for a night in jail. There was no threat to the public, there was no flight risk. There was only vindictiveness on the part of prosecutors and the Ontario Provincial Police.

All Greenspan's attempts to get his client out of jail that Sunday were fruitless. He was furious with the authorities. He voiced his frustrations in a May 5, 2003 Canadian Press article.

"I never believed in a democracy I would ever wake up one morning and find that a writer who hasn't been tried or convicted…could be arrested and put in jail."

"You would expect this in Iran… you wouldn't expect this in Canada."

Greenspan said police handling of his client smacks of vindictiveness, in that despite their clear knowledge that Williams had a lawyer, he was arrested at his farm instead of being allowed to have his lawyer surrender him.

Saying Williams would plead "Not Guilty" should the case ever actually make it into a court of law, Greenspan had no doubts about why his client was arrested.

"I don't think it's got anything to do with breaching orders; I think it's got to do with the fact he wrote a book that was critical of police and critical of the Crown," he said in the Canadian Press article.

Williams himself had no illusions about his "takedown".

"I've always felt that there was a vendetta…" he said in the same article.

Police, of course, insist they have done nothing wrong.

In the same Canadian press article Detective Superintendent Ross Bingley stated, "There was nothing done differently that wouldn't have been done in a normal case." Which seems to confirm that this sort of treatment of Canadian citizens is standard procedure.

In a classic case of overkill, on May 5th, 2003 authorities charged Stephen Williams with 94 charges counts of disobeying a court order relating to his two books and website. And just in case they missed something, the also charged him with two counts of "unsafe storage of a firearm".

Which is what caught my attention in the beginning.

A May 6, 2003 Montreal Gazette editorial panned on the police action as well.

"The case of Stephen Williams is clear evidence that there's no place in an open society for court-imposed publication bans on judicial proceedings."

"…in a world where a 12-year-old with a personal computer has easy access to more information than there is in an entire major library, it's absurd to think that it's possible to hide forever something that happened in an open courtroom. …the attempt to do so just exposes the whole judicial system to mockery, even contempt. Justice, as the old adage goes, must not only be done; it must also be seen to be done."

It seems absurd that eight years after the Bernardo trial ended, that the publication ban can be justified, indeed if it ever could have been.

The Gazette editorial ends with, "And who, in the end, does the silence protect? The prime beneficiaries would appear to be the police and prosecutors who bungled the case from the start. To convict Bernardo of first-degree murder, the authorities struck a devil's bargain with his wife, trading a light sentence for her testimony - which wouldn't have been necessary if police had shown the slightest glimmer of competence. Hiding just how evil their star witness was protects them and her from the well-earned fury of us all."

The crux of the new charges related to the fact Williams had in his possession all of part of the Crown's brief in the Bernardo case. There is no law prohibiting someone from possessing a Crown brief, even though the document would not be considered "public domain".

More "True Crime" books than can easily be counted have been written from the basis of Crown briefs. In fact it is generally the basis for all books of that genre.
Of particular note is this: none of the 94 charges related to the brief itself, even though the government desperately sought to retrieve the document from Williams.

At least two other news agencies had copies of the Crown's brief. The CBC had a copy of it, and to date neither news organization has ever been requested to surrender it. What is it that makes Williams' copy so dangerous, and the CBC's not?

Good questions, but ones the Ontario Attorney General's office refuses to answer.

On Tuesday, May 20th, 2003 author Stephen Williams complied with the "extraordinary" court order and surrendered his collection of information in the Bernardo case.

George Jonas, a respected columnist for the Ottawa Citizen, wrote in his May 26, 2003 column, "Lawyers are still trying to suppress documents in the infamous Bernardo-Homolka case. But obscuring public events by "privacy rights" is insidious. At best it gives officials and others licence to cover up embarrassing facts. At worst, it leads to secret proceedings in star chambers."

"Such "privacy rights" have no place in a free society."

Regardless, Stephen Williams was scheduled to appear in court on August 21, 2003 to set a date for his trial.

With all that in motion, the Ontario Provincial Police felt the need for another search. In the early morning hours of Friday, July 18, 2003 six police cruisers arrived as they again raided the home of Stephen Williams.

The warrant stipulated the police could search the residence of Stephen Williams from 6am to 9pm on Friday, July 18, 2003, although police said they may extend the warrant.

They were apparently searching for computers and documents. Go figure. A writer with a computer? Who'd have guessed. But it takes 15 hours to find them inside a single home? Apparently the Ontario Provincial Police believe in being incredibly thorough when it comes to searching a writer's home. If only they had showed a fraction of that diligence in searching Bernerdo's.

During the raid they also took Stephen's wife, Marsha Boulton's computer and all her research notes on her current book, a historical novel based on the true story of an 1850's Presbyterian cult in Cape Breton.

"I didn't know it was illegal to write about Presbyterians", Williams said in an October 23, 2003 Canadian Press article.

"This is obviously an attempt to demonize me…" he continued in an October 23 Globe and Mail article.

Roughly 50 of the 94 charges related to his website, which was online for only 24 hours. Another 30 or so charges relates to Williams' first book, "Invisible Darkness", and the remainder to his second book, "Karla: A Pact with the Devil".

Ontario Provincial Police Superintendent Ross Bingley said the number of charges was required due to Mr. Williams' repeated violation of the privacy of rape victims.

Bingly stated, "We take these offenses very seriously, in that protection of sexual assault victims is paramount in this country. That' why the investigation took so long and was so thorough."

Lawyer Edward Greenspan doesn't buy it. In an October 23, 2003 Globe and Mail article he said:

"Had he (Williams) written a book favourable to the government and the police, I don't think we would be here."

Nor does Williams himself. In the same article he said:

"I'm no hero. I'm no poster boy for free expression. I simply set out to write a book that told these stories. Any thinking person in this country knows my books are very well done and that they are indictments of the Attorney-General, the police and the state."

Williams believes the firearms charges were just one more thing the State could pile on.

"It's just one more thing. We had been plagued recently by foxes and raccoons' we have lost 30 chickens. Every farm in the country has them (firearms)."

When all else fails, use the Firearms Act against the citizenry. It's the one catch-all police and prosecutors can count on. The provisions of the Firearms Act make it easy for both police and prosecutors.

For starters, the onus is on the accused to prove their innocence, freeing the state from that pesky thing called "proof". When the accused is guilty until he/she can prove him/herself innocent, what chance does the lone individual have? Tyranny has indeed taken hold. The concept of a "fair hearing" was also slayed with the passage of the Firearms Act. A lone bureaucrat makes decisions the individual then must challenge in court, at great personal expense.

There have, however, been small glimmers of hope through this ordeal. Stephen Williams was named recipient of the Hellman/Hammet Grant for 2004. The grant, administered by US-based Human Rights Watch, is used to financially assist journalists around the world persecuted because of their work.

PEN Canada National Affairs Chair Chris Waddell heralded the award. In Candian Journalists for Free Expression's May 12, 2004 Media Release, he wrote:

"We applaud this decision to recognize Stephen Williams. His battle with the (Ontario) provincial government has often been a lonely one, so we are thrilled to see him receive this support from such a respected organization as Human Rights Watch."

http://diarmani.com/Articles/Armani/Criticize%20the%20State%20at%20Your%20Peril.htm
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Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive; those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. - C.S. Lewis, In Freedom .

Celebrate Hard Likker and Handgun week here at the Shadowy GroupTM

Posted: 12/ 29/ 04 12:44 pm Post subject:

You are as free as the government wants you to be.
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Posted: 12/ 29/ 04 12:51 pm Post subject:

Posted: 12/ 29/ 04 1:58 pm Post subject:

Alberta separation looks better and better...
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"Politics is the art of the possible!" Do not (mis)underestimate Harper

Posted: 12/ 29/ 04 8:02 pm Post subject:

I am afraid things like this Stephen Williams case is only the begining. If and when there is a serious downturn in the economy, things will get much worse.

Take that Saskatchewan Mp who merely had the audacity to support the idea that all indian treaties and the department of indian affairs be extinguished to end what is essentially an appartheid system. I forget the Mp's name just now, but, naturally he was promtly accused of racism and found himself in court to defend himself against "hate" cahrges. Finding no evidence whatsoever, the court dismissed the charges ...... but the Mp was still compelled to appear before a quasi judicial tribunal over the same matter.

Yes folks, we truly are living in a socialist police state.

Posted: 12/ 29/ 04 8:43 pm Post subject:

What constitutes a Police State. When you do not have the right to private property, grain farmers jailed for selling their own wheat. When you do not have a free press, see above article plus the fact the government owns the CBC, and owns most of the other media by holding the purse strings to grants and payola ie Canadian Content. Don't forget the CRTC and shutting down the radio station in Quebec. Also not allowed US programming. They went to court to keep control on what you can and cannot watch. When the state throws dissenters in jail. Grain farmers, grannies protesting abortion, journalists, various protesters. Are the officials of the state held to account just like everyone else, see post on bill C-24, exempting gov. officials and police from the law when they break the law in the commission of their so called duties. Pay attention to the part about how groups of them can be exempted from due process. When free men and women are disarmed by the state. When will the murder of citizens begin that is usually the last hurdle they cross.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. -- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776--"If You Haven't Suffered Enough It Is Your God Given Right To Suffer Some More" Wm. Aberhart Alberta Premier

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