After months of incarceration, activist Alex Hundert is free at last in Stephen Harper’s Canada—for the moment. Read his full statement.
I can find only one mention in the corporate media, which has for the most part imposed a virtual black-out on this arbitrary suspension of civil liberties by the forces of law and order.
Hundert has been in jail for alleged “conspiracy” in the G20 events last summer, although he was arrested before the demonstrations even took place. His bail was revoked by our judicial system, once for attending a university panel as a speaker, and once for jotting down a licence number after leaving a courthouse.
In order to get out of jail, Hundert took a plea bargain, was convicted of one count of breach of bail, and sentenced to 30 days time served.
The plea was in exchange for having the breach of bail coming from an almost identical event at Wilfrid Laurier University dropped, along with two counts of breaching my probation (which is left over from an older charge in Cayuga resulting from a blockade in Cayuga) dropped. They have also stopped the proceedings to collect a hundred and twenty thousand dollars from my sureties. More importantly, I finally got a new bail, including being able to post to the internet, having no curfew, and being able to leave the house with designates.
His trial date had been moved to March, and bail would have been set in April, meaning seven months of jail without conviction. So, in effect, Hundert was blackmailed by the Crown: plead guilty to bail breach, and you can get out of jail. For now.
Hundert is still facing the original conspiracy charge, plus the “intimidation” charge (the phone number nonsense).
No, this is not Tunisia, and this is not Egypt. But as Boris at Galloping Beaver pointed out, police in Egypt arrested seven hundred demonstrators in a country of 80 million people during a popular uprising. The cops in Toronto arrested over 1,000 peaceful demonstrators and unlucky observers during the G20.
One by one, the police and their Crown allies are picking off activists and attempting to frame innocent citizens like Stacy Bonds. And, largely unaccountable, they appear to be growing bolder.
A serious question: what will it take to put a stop to this? Reader speculation welcome.
[H/t “John Smith,” b/c]
UPDATE: The Toronto Star now has a piece up.
