Former hostage Joshua Boyle faces more charges, including sex assault

Nobody knew hard work like Cameron Scrim.

Dyslexic and funny as hell, he spent his high school nights at the kitchen table with his champion, Janet Scrim. She didn’t want her son to get left behind, so she spent her evenings guiding him through homework. And she rallied his teachers to help him graduate. The day he presented his diploma to his mother was a defining moment in their lives.

Scrim always had to work harder than most, especially when it came to things some take for granted — like reading and writing. He triumphed over his so-called learning disabilities and graduated from an apprenticeship and landed his dream job as a transport truck mechanic. His colleagues at Tallman Truck Centre looked up to him. He couldn’t get the paperwork down but he was the guy you wanted under the hood.

His close-knit family had just celebrated his 31st birthday on April 23, 2017. He spent his last day of life — May 11 — attending his niece’s art show and his brother-in-law’s birthday party. He was a family man — the fun uncle, that brother who felt more like a best friend, and the son who played golf with his father.

He had a lovely girlfriend and had just bought a house. He was on his way.

But at 11:30 p.m. on May 11, Scrim met an untimely death at the intersection of Woodroffe Avenue and Norice Street.

He was driving southbound in a Honda Civic and had just begun a left turn onto Norice. That’s when Jakob Wham, 20 at the time, blew a red, T-boning Scrim’s car. Wham was driving in the northbound lane, going 151 km/h in a 60 km/h zone.

Cameron Scrim, supplied photo.

On Monday, court heard how Wham ran from the scene and left Scrim to die alone. He ended up at his mother’s house and then lied to police saying he had been home all night with his girlfriend and that his family’s Hyundai Elantra had been reported stolen. At Wham’s behest, his girlfriend also lied to police to cover his tracks.

Days later, on Mother’s Day, Wham turned himself into police and confessed.

The young man stood in Ottawa court on Monday and pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing death and was sentenced to two years in prison. The guilty plea spared the family what would have been a graphic trial.

One by one, Scrim’s family took turns reading victim impact statements at the sentencing hearing.

His mother didn’t have to introduce herself but she did:

“I’m Cameron’s mom,” she began.

In a tearful address to the man who killed her son, she said there were no words to make anyone understand her devastating loss.

She thinks of her son when a certain song come on the radio. She cringes every time she hears a car roaring by, going way too fast. She wonders what her son was thinking in his dying moments.

“How I hug his picture now instead of him … it never ends.”

His father, Byron, decided against writing a victim impact statement because he figured it wouldn’t do any good, let alone bring their son back.

Janet Scrim was inclined to agree but she wanted to put a face to the victim for anyone who would listen.

She wanted everyone to know just how much her son was loved.

She told the hushed courtroom that there’s no sense harbouring feelings of hatred or a desire for revenge. That, she said, will only make you a “miserable, bitter person and God knows Cameron would never want us to live like that.”

She gave her last words to her son. She looked directly at Wham, and on behalf of her dead son, wished him “good luck.”

Janet Scrim said it was a miracle that Wham had escaped the awful crash without a scratch. She said his second chance in life was meant to be and urged him to use it and do good in the world, and help others out like Cameron did.

“He was an all-around good guy and his co-workers looked up to him,” said Dwight McMillan, general manager for Tallman Truck Centre.

The truck repair garage is going to put Cameron’s uniform on display at the shop. His toolbox has been donated to the Truck and Coach Program at Algonquin College, where his family has established a scholarship fund in his name.

In victim impact statements by other family members, Wham was portrayed as a selfish coward who left someone to die alone only to later lie to police to cover his tracks. Scrim’s family spoke of their devastating loss, one that has altered their daily lives and notably what used to be fun family holidays. They called it a “senseless” death.

The judge called the case “tragic” and noted the guilty plea spared the victim’s family from reliving the awful details.

Wham was sentenced to two years in prison and will be banned from driving for 10 years.

At the time of the deadly crash, Wham was driving without a license. It had been suspended for careless driving.

gdimmock@postmedia.com

Disgraced Ottawa teacher Jessica Beraldin has been spared jail after admitting she had a sexual relationship with one of her students.

The teacher, who now uses her maiden name Jessica Fiore, stood in court Thursday and said she was deeply sorry for exploiting the teen boy and pleaded guilty to sexual assault. In a tearful apology, Fiore said her marriage was falling apart and she sought “support and affection in the wrong places.”

“I am very disappointed in myself,” she told court, noting that she had taken advantage of her position of trust.

Fiore was spared jail and instead granted a six-month conditional sentence and 18 months of probation.

Her teaching career is over and she is prohibited from being around boys under 18. She is now on the sex offender registry. Before leaving the Elgin Street courthouse Thursday, she was ordered to submit a DNA sample.

The court recognized that her guilty plea spared the victim and his family what would have been a graphic trial.

Fiore’s family — including her father, a retired Ottawa police sergeant — attended Thursday’s sentencing hearing as a strong show of support. They also filed letters of support that spoke of their disappointment and their confidence that she’ll rebuild her life.

The plea deal that spared the teacher jail was a joint position by the Crown and the defence lawyer.

According to Ottawa police, the sex crimes case dates back to July 5, 2014. Fiore was arrested in 2016 and was 30 at the time.

The Ottawa Catholic School Board said at the time of her arrest that it was deeply sorry to learn of the news. It also said it regretted that such conduct occurred at one of its schools, urged students not to speculate about the case on social media and said it would pray “for all the persons affected by this difficult situation.”

Fiore is considered a very low risk to re-offend, according to a doctor’s report filed in court.

There is no guarantee of love in life. Birth, unlike a vacuum, doesn’t come with a warranty. It’s more like a lottery, yet love sometimes blooms in the darkest corners.

Sometimes, it doesn’t even start flickering until someone has endured absolute horror in a time absent of love.

Even with two parents with good jobs, and a home that looks great from the outside, there’s still no guarantee of love inside.

I’ve come across some pretty crummy parents down at the Elgin Street courthouse.

You can almost forgive the parents whose hard-drug habits launched their chaos, but then there’s the so-called clean-living parent who stands as a modern-day portrait of evil.

Take the monster from the suburbs, the Mountie who starved and tortured his 11-year-old son.

Handcuffed, shackled, beaten and burned. The naked boy slept in chains on the basement floor, next to a slop bucket, while the rest of his family went about their daily routines upstairs.

Myself and former Ottawa Sun writer Tony Spears watched the videos of the Mountie’s disturbing interrogations of his terrified and naked son, bound and chained and begging: “I want my family back.”

His father demanded the boy repent and said he’d weep blood.

I spoke with Tony on the phone hours later, at midnight. It’ll eat you up if you don’t talk about it.

Everyone in that courtroom witnessed an unvarnished strain of pure evil. Justice Robert Maranger said the boy, this young innocent boy, was nothing in his father’s eyes. The judge said the depths of violence and degradation were beyond comprehension.

It was the first and only time I’ve seen a defence lawyer cry in court. I’ve seen cops and jail guards cry in court, but never a defence lawyer. It’s hard not to cry when you see the boy down in the basement.

I don’t watch horror movies, but it was like watching a real-life horror film. I try to make homicide cases a priority, but this case needed to be reported, off and on, for three years because it was worse than homicide.

It was worse because the victim lived to talk about it. That’s what Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne London-Weinstein told me at the time, back when she was the criminal lawyer defending the stepmother who failed the boy.

The 11-year-old boy, who was starving to death, weighed only 50 pounds the day he escaped his Kanata dungeon.

The first time he escaped, the police returned him to the house of his horrors. The second time he escaped, Ottawa police came within seconds of reuniting the boy with his RCMP father before deciding otherwise.

Maranger, the trial judge, said the boy had been robbed of his childhood, and noted that the disgraced Mountie did not express remorse.

The boy’s monster was sentenced to prison in April. His son didn’t attend the hearing but he sent a note that he wrote to his father.

Courtroom No. 32 fell silent as love quietly triumphed over despair, from the words of a boy who has endured more hardship than most will in a lifetime.

The boy’s note to his father was read aloud: “You used to always tell me that two plus two equalled four. If you take all of the multiples of four, that still wouldn’t equal all of the people that now care for me and are in my life. If one day you stop thinking about yourself, you may realize how wrong what you did was.”

The boy’s father kept his head down in the prisoner’s box while his son’s note was read.

The detectives who worked the case reported that the boy went on to be surrounded by love and support.

Sometimes love finds a way.

I’ve also seen cases that end without love. The worst of these cases, all recent, are about three young men who killed the person they loved the most — their mothers.

Then there are the dads who stand up in court and tell their son’s killer that they murdered the one they loved most. It’s usually over a lousy bag of weed.

The grieving dads usually say they are in a living hell. Always an empty chair at every family occasion, and Christmas is always hard, if they bother to celebrate it. Some families of the slain stopped celebrating anything years ago. They feel too guilty to do anything that feels fun.

For the last bit, I’ve been thinking about love because it’s one of the potent themes in a production I’ve been cast in. It’s a show written and shepherded by Nadia Ross, artistic director of STO Union, a multi-disciplinary performance arts company.

It’s called The Twilight Parade, and it highlights a particular kind of love — the love that comes from simply being here. Nadia says this is a love, which, when felt, leads to belonging.

In the show, now running at Arts Court as part of the Undercurrents Festival, there’s an angry white man named Dick. He blames others for his problems.

There’s a moving scene when Dick, a racist, is taken outside in a blizzard, and ordered to look at a human being and to see beyond their anger and confusion and beyond their despair, and to see underneath that there is love.

Says Ross: “That is what we are made of. Simply being has a quality of love in it. Just being alive has this quality. It’s like it just exists, is always there, when everything else is taken away.”

The moment Dick sees love as being what we are made of, his first feeling is remorse: there is so much to apologize for when you have spent a lifetime putting the blame somewhere it doesn’t belong. But that’s where forgiveness can come in. Dick’s error is common, is everywhere. That he sees it, apologizes and his apology is witnessed and accepted brings him to feel what has been so lacking in his world: real belonging through being. This kind of love, the love of belonging, is probably at the root of all kinds of love, romantic or otherwise.

Twitter.com/crimegarden

When Maria Desousa, 81, was brought to the Montfort Hospital on Saturday afternoon, she was already dead.

It didn’t take long for the coroner to conclude that her fatal injuries were extremely inconsistent with a simple fall. The coroner figured Desousa’s death was anything but accidental and ruled it a homicide.

Ottawa homicide detectives were called in and, on Tuesday afternoon, Desousa’s son and his girlfriend were charged with first-degree murder.

Paulo Desousa, 40, and Danielle LeBlanc, 36, are being held at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre on Innes Road. They are prohibited from communicating.

Desousa, who is from Kingston, was killed at her son’s Orléans home on Parkrose Private, according to police. LeBlanc also lived at the Orléans home, now a guarded crime scene.

Police documents filed in court say Desousa was killed on Feb. 8 — two days before she was brought to the hospital.

The accused killers made brief court appearances on Tuesday afternoon via video from the Ottawa courthouse cellblock.

Police outside home on Parkrose Private in Orléans where an 81-year-old woman was allegedly murdered.

Danielle LeBlanc, who looked like she had been treated for a broken nose, with bandages over her nose and brow, appeared first. She appeared remarkably calm when she was formally charged with first-degree murder.

Desousa, clean cut, with a shaved head and trimmed goatee, also appeared calm.

None of the charges has been tested, let alone proved, in court.

Neighbours said police descended on the quiet east-end street near Highway 174 and Trim Road late Saturday afternoon and have been guarding the house since.

An officer ringed the rowhouse with police tape Tuesday morning; one cruiser was parked in the driveway and a second was parked in the back with a view of the backyard fence.

Neighbours said they had not seen an elderly woman at the house and only one said he had even seen the man who lived there.

David Gionet said police knocked on his door to ask if he had heard any noises.

“I heard nothing,” Gionet said. “It’s shocking.”

Police also asked him about his neighbour, a man who appeared to live alone and whom he’d only seen when he was outside cutting grass and shovelling.

Gionet said he saw the man in the backyard with a pit-bull type dog.

The investigation continues and a coroner was expected to help determine the cause and time of death, according to Const. Chuck Benoit.

With files from Megan Gillis

The last time Mustafa Ahmed hit the old Sentral nightclub in the ByWard Market, he left as a fugitive wanted in the killing of gang-banger Omar Rashid-Ghader.

It was the other side of midnight, on Sunday Aug. 14, 2016, and Rashid-Ghader, 33, got into it with Ahmed, 28. They started shouting at one another, and then it turned into what would be a deadly fight. Rashid-Ghader, an aspiring rapper, hit Ahmed over the head with a bottle and Ahmed pulled a handgun. They fought and ended up on the floor. The fight ended when Ahmed allegedly shot Rashid-Ghader and fled the Dalhousie Street nightclub.

Rashid-Ghader was dead on the floor, and police and later paramedics tried to revive him with no luck.

Ahmed, the accused killer, lived on the lam until Thursday when police arrested him in Toronto on a warrant for second-degree murder.

Omar Rashid-Ghader was shot multiple times on Aug. 14, 2016.

The killing was captured on nightclub security cameras, according to police.

Ahmed, who is being represented by Abergel Goldstein, made a brief court appearance on Friday afternoon when he was formally charged.

Brooklyn’s Maino, who learned how to rap in prison, was the featured performer at the now-defunct Sentral on the night Rashid-Ghader died.

While Rashid-Ghader dreamed of being a rapper, his legacy is nothing more than being an original member of the street gang Ledbury-Banff Crips, named after two streets in a south-end public housing project.

There were four shootings in the city on that Sunday in 2016, but the nightclub shooting was the only deadly one.

Just weeks before accused ISIL recruiter Awso Peshdary is scheduled to go on trial, the RCMP has disclosed key documents to his defence team, some three years after his arrest.

The handover of 1,900 documents comes after top anti-terrorism investigators launched an internal audit last month to see if all relevant evidence had been appropriately disclosed. It hadn’t, and the 11th hour disclosure has the potential to jeopardize the case against Peshdary, should his lawyer request an adjournment or a stay, or later argue that his client’s case took too long to get to court.

Police are required by law to disclose all relevant evidence so the accused can mount a full and fair defence, and that evidence is supposed to be handed over long before trial dates are set.

Ottawa’s Awso Peshdary, 28, is scheduled to go on trial in March to face RCMP allegations that he is a star recruiter and terrorism financier, but his top defence lawyer, Solomon Friedman, is still getting key disclosure after years of fighting in court.

On Jan. 24, federal prosecutors finally handed over the 1,900 documents which, among other things, reveal that the RCMP edited a draft of an application for a key search warrant at the behest of Canada’s spy agency.

Federal prosecutors handed over more key documents on Feb. 5.

These documents provide a rare, inside look into the inner workings of the country’s anti-terrorism investigators.

They paint a portrait of an RCMP investigative team that was keeping secrets, even from one another.

Take the secret meeting an RCMP inspector had with CSIS in the summer of 2013, regarding its asset Abdullah Milton.

The Mounties would later hire Milton to infiltrate the ISIL-connected terrorism network in Ottawa with which Peshdary is allegedly linked.

The meeting happened roughly eight months before the lead RCMP investigator learned that his prized agent, Milton, had previously worked as a CSIS asset.

So while other investigators on the same team were having secret meetings with CSIS — meetings that were reported to the RCMP’s chief superintendent — the lead investigator was kept in the dark.

The lead RCMP investigator only learned that Milton was a CSIS asset when they moved to expand their Peshdary investigation and get a wire to target Milton.

For unknown reasons, top Mounties at the RCMP’s headquarters also failed to forward the 1,900 pages of disclosure to its own investigative team. The RCMP’s primary investigator in Project Servant — an investigation that led to charges against Peshdary — asked RCMP headquarters for full disclosure shortly after Peshdary’s arrest. Again, and for reasons that remain a mystery, evidence that was marked “relevant” was then not disclosed to the defence until the eve of trial.

The primary investigator testified this week in Ottawa court that he was concerned relevant material from headquarters was not disclosed when he asked for it three years ago.

CSIS has also finally handed over relevant evidence. The intelligence agency handed over CDs to the defence on Feb. 12. Those CDs were blank but CSIS later handed over CDs that contained 906 digital files that include 2013 conversations between Milton, 39, and Peshdary. The conversations are revealed in screenshots from Facebook messages. In one message, Peshdary says fellow Muslims are slandering him and accusing him of extremism, only for the agent to reply “For real? Wow! What have you said in the past 2 years that is extreme? I haven’t heard you say anything extreme.”

Peshdary:”They are accusing me of recruiting people to fight in Syria which is such a lie.”

“Ya, you told me NOT to go to Syria,” Milton replies.

CSIS, under a rare court order to disclose some of its secret records last year, finally handed over even more disclosure on Feb. 16, including key notes from when they assessed Milton before using him as an asset. The freshly disclosed CSIS documents detail the RCMP agent’s “nervous breakdown” and the time when he “self-harmed” by banging his head against bars of a jail cell after being arrested for domestic assault.

The fresh disclosure comes after a 2016 motion by the defence lawyer, Friedman, for third-party records from CSIS. The motion has so far uncovered a pile of evidence that was never disclosed to the defence team.

Milton was initially a CSIS asset who had been recruited despite an assessment by the spy agency that portrayed him as a parasitic psychopath.

CSIS had approached Milton in January 2011 and he was later assessed for reliability in two interviews in 2012. Milton was first interviewed on Oct. 30, 2012, for three hours, then again on Oct. 31, 2012, for five hours. Beyond the interviews, government agents also investigated his private life.

The Muslim convert was on welfare and teetering on bankruptcy at the time. He had significant mental health issues and had been married at least seven times.

The Mounties came across Milton during their investigation into Peshdary. They wanted to include Milton in a wiretap as a person of interest. Milton would go from being an RCMP target to a prized agent who was paid at least $700,000 to spy on his friends.

The RCMP never asked CSIS about its credibility assessment of Milton, saying that it wanted an unbiased view of its new agent, and that if there had been any problems with Milton the intelligence service would have cut him adrift.

The RCMP project culminated in the arrests of Peshdary and three other young Ottawa men — Vanier twins Ashton and Carlos Larmond along with Suliman Mohamed. The Larmonds and Mohamed are now serving prison sentences after entering guilty pleas to RCMP terrorism charges that were built on evidence provided by Milton.

Because of their guilty pleas, no trial was held and no one heard from Milton. Guilty pleas were entered without the benefit of any of the key Crown disclosure that has emerged from Friedman’s successful motions.

The RCMP declined to comment on the case because it’s before the courts, and CSIS did not respond to a request for comment.

A Chelsea doctor accused of secretly filming a female patient and sexually assaulting 10 more patients dating back to 1995, is no longer under house arrest.

Dr. Vincent Nadon, 56, had his bail conditions loosened on Wednesday, the same day he was charged with 10 more counts of sexual assault. The doctor’s house arrest was only for 30 days to give Ottawa police detectives more time in their sprawling investigation. Nadon was first charged with sex assault and voyeurism after a patient in her 20s reported a Jan. 16 incident in which the doctor is accused of secretly filming her during a medical exam at a University of Ottawa Health Services clinic.

When police announced the doctor’s arrest, more patients came forward with allegations of sexual assault.

After he was initially charged, Nadon was removed from his position at the clinic and banned from practising at all other University of Ottawa Health Services clinics.

Police searched Nadon’s Chelsea home for evidence after his arrest and he won bail after his wife and brother posted $10,000 each as sureties. While Nadon is no longer under house arrest, he remains under strict bail conditions and is not allowed to use any recording devices and can’t access the internet without his wife or brother looking over his shoulder. The doctor is also banned from communicating with any of his former patients.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is also investigating the doctor.

None of the allegations against Nadon has been tested in court.

Police are still investigating and have launched a tip line for anyone with information about the case.

613-236-1222, ext. 5760 or email mcm@ottawapolice.ca.

gdimmock@postmedia.com

Ian Bursey won’t be cutting through his neighbour’s backyard anytime soon.

The last time he did — July 3, 2016 — he was arrested and charged with attempted murder after firing a handgun into the air. On Monday he was sent to prison for two years after pleading guilty to the lesser offence of possession of a loaded prohibited gun.

It was a Sunday night, and after drinking at home, the failed Ottawa city council candidate — he ran against Barrhaven powerhouse Jan Harder in 2014 — left his home to get a pack of smokes at the gas station. He brought money — and a loaded gun.

He cut through a neighbour’s backyard. It’s big and wooded. The neighbour was outside when Bursey, 50, cut through his property around 10 p.m. The neighbour approached Bursey, who pulled a handgun — a Second World War collectible — and fired it into the air.

The neighbour charged Bursey and knocked him down. The neighbour’s wife called 911 while her husband took care of Bursey, who was left with a bloodied face, nose and a black eye. Bursey was taken to hospital for treatment and arrested upon release. Bursey was originally charged with a slew of offences but his defence lawyer Brett McGarry negotiated a deal that saw his client, who had no prior criminal record, plead guilty to the single firearms offence.

“Mr. Bursey took full responsibility for his actions today which were an isolated mistake in an otherwise law-abiding life. The court considered Mr. Bursey’s lack of a criminal record, history of hard work, and his apology, in arriving at the sentence,” McGarry told this newspaper.

Bursey filed an apology letter in court on Monday:

“I understand that the events must have been scary for you and your family, and I am very sorry for that. Please know that you have nothing to fear from me.”

Bursey ran for city council in Barrhaven ward in 2014. He got 2,490 votes, or nearly 22 per cent of the vote, losing to longtime incumbent Jan Harder.

In 2014, shortly after losing the election, Bursey took to Twitter to complain about “rising” crime in Barrhaven — including gun crime.

Accused killer Adam Picard is expected to file a fresh application for another stay of his first-degree murder case on grounds that it took too long to get to trial.

Picard, 34, in fact, had won a stay back in 2016 for unreasonable delay after spending four years in jail awaiting trial for the June 2012 killing of Fouad Nayel, 28.

The stunning decision that saw Picard walk out of court a free man devastated Nayel’s family. Even the judge said the justice system had failed everyone. But Ontario’s appeal court disagreed with the trial judge’s interpretation of the Jordan decision and reinstated the murder charge against Picard. The former military man surrendered in September, was sent back to jail and scheduled for trial in April.

But now there’s another delay in a case once stayed for too many delays.

Nicole and Amine Nayel are photographed in their Ottawa home on Wednesday June 14, 2017. Their son, Fouad Nayel, was killed in 2012.

The so-called Jordan decision was issued in July 2016, when the Supreme Court of Canada, in a 5-4 ruling, said unreasonable delay was to be presumed if proceedings topped 18 months in provincial court or 30 months in Superior Court.

Picard’s legal team, now led by Michael Crystal, has been granted an adjournment for more time to prepare. So the first-degree murder case scheduled for April will now unfold in September.

Picard’s defence team believes he is innocent an intends to vigorously defend him.

It is unclear if Picard will pursue his notice for leave to appeal the reinstatement of his murder charge.

Picard’s murder charge was reinstated after the appeal court said the case deserved more latitude since charges were laid well before the Jordan ruling, and that the delays would have been acceptable under the previous legal regime.

The appeal court also said Justice Julianne Parfett made mistakes in her trial delay calculations.

The appeal court found that, properly analyzed, the Crown could be held responsible for only 14 months of the four-year delay, which would keep the case well within the bounds of previous Supreme Court guidelines.

On the day the trial judge set Picard free, she told court:

“I cannot but emphasize that the more serious the charges, the more the justice system has to work to ensure that the matter is tried within a reasonable time … the thread that runs through the present case is the culture of complacency that the Supreme Court condemned in Jordan.”

Nayel, a 28-year-old construction worker, had been missing for five months when his decomposed remains were discovered in the woods near Calabogie in 2012.

Police say Nayel knew his accused killer through drug deals.

Assistant Crown attorneys Dallas Mack and Louise Tansey declined to comment on their long-awaited prosecution of Adam Picard.

Picard’s defence lawyer also declined to comment.

Days before accused ISIL recruiter Awso Peshdary is scheduled to go on trial, CSIS has been forced to finally hand over a top-secret search warrant to his defence team.

The intelligence agency has been fighting in court for two years to keep the key evidence secret from the defence, but a rare court order has compelled them to disclose it on the eve of Peshdary’s trial, scheduled for jury selection on Monday.

CSIS has long tried to keep it secret, saying in court it’s covered by national security privilege and that it’s irrelevant to the RCMP’s terrorism case against Peshdary. But this week Ontario Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett ruled otherwise and ordered the intelligence service to disclose the materials.

The court order marks the latest victory in defence lawyer Solomon Friedman’s legal fight for third-party records from CSIS. The spy agency plays a key role in the RCMP’s case. Abdullah Milton, who was paid by the RCMP to infiltrate an Ottawa ISIL network allegedly linked to Peshdary, was a former CSIS asset.

The Peshdary legal hearings have also revealed that Milton destroyed notes he kept at the behest of CSIS. It should be noted that the CSIS asset’s intelligence was essential to the RCMP investigation against Peshdary, court has heard.

The spy agency’s relationship with Milton is key to the case because if not for CSIS intelligence, the RCMP would not have been able to secure a search warrant for their target. In fact, the RCMP was twice denied authorization for a search warrant by the courts because their grounds were too shaky. It wasn’t until CSIS afforded its intelligence to the RCMP that the national police force was finally able to win a search warrant after its third try. That warrant targeted John Maguire, an Ottawa man who joined ISIL and appeared in a worldwide propaganda video that condemned infidels. Maguire is presumed dead overseas.

The warrant allegedly intercepted calls between Peshdary and his alleged star recruit, Maguire.

The court order compelling CSIS to finally hand over key disclosure evidence comes days after the RCMP suddenly said they found 1,900 documents that should have been given to the defence some three years ago when Peshdary was arrested on terrorism charges.

The forced, 11th-hour disclosure to the defence could jeopardize the entire case should his lawyer request an adjournment or a stay, or later argue that his client’s case took too long to get to court.

Police are required by law to disclose all relevant evidence so the accused can mount a full and fair defence, and that evidence is supposed to be handed over long before trial dates are set.

On Jan. 24, federal prosecutors finally handed over the 1,900 documents that, among other things, reveal that the RCMP edited a draft of an application for a key search warrant at the behest of Canada’s spy agency.

Friedman’s third-party records application has yielded rare fruit, and its disclosed materials so far provide an inside look into the inner workings of the country’s anti-terrorism investigators.

They paint a portrait of an RCMP investigative team that was keeping secrets, even from one another.

The lead RCMP investigator only learned that Milton was a CSIS asset when they moved to expand their Peshdary investigation and get a wire to target Milton.

For unknown reasons, top Mounties at the RCMP headquarters also failed to forward the 1,900 pages of disclosure to their own investigative team. The RCMP’s primary investigator in Project Servant — an investigation that led to charges against Peshdary — asked RCMP headquarters for full disclosure shortly after Peshdary’s arrest. Again, for reasons that remain a mystery, evidence that was marked “relevant” was then not disclosed to the defence until the eve of trial.

According to a CSIS briefing to the RCMP, Peshdary accompanied Maguire in the car ride to a Montreal airport, where Maguire boarded a plane for overseas. Peshdary kept in contact with Maguire while he was in Syria, with CSIS intercepting four conversations in the summer of 2013, according to court filings.

Milton was initially a CSIS asset who had been recruited despite an assessment by the spy agency that portrayed him as a parasitic psychopath.

The Muslim convert was on welfare and teetering on bankruptcy at the time. He had significant mental health issues and had been married at least seven times. He was also arrested for domestic assault.

The RCMP never asked CSIS about its credibility assessment of Milton, saying they wanted an unbiased view of their new agent, and that if there had been any problems with Milton the intelligence service would have cut him adrift.

The RCMP project culminated in the arrests of Peshdary and three other young Ottawa men — Vanier twins Ashton and Carlos Larmond, andSuliman Mohamed. The Larmonds and Mohamed are now serving prison sentences after entering guilty pleas to RCMP terrorism charges that were built on evidence provided by Milton.

Because of their guilty pleas, no trial was held and no one heard from Milton, the key Crown witness who has severe credibility issues. They, after consultation with their lawyers, pleaded guilty to terrorism without the benefit of any of the key Crown disclosure that has emerged from Friedman’s successful motions.

The RCMP declined to comment on the case because it’s before the courts, and CSIS did not respond to a request for comment

Ottawa’s Kenny Tattersall, a 48-year-old air traffic controller, has pleaded guilty to molesting a girl at his private airport hangar.

Tattersall started molesting the girl when she was 12 and wasn’t arrested until three years later when she summoned the courage to expose the sex predator.

The child-sex criminal was arrested and charged with a series of offences on Oct. 9, 2015 — days after he apologized to the girl by text.

He texted that he had betrayed her trust, and said “I cannot even begin to apologize.”

Tattersall apologized only after he was exposed and had always told her that if she told anyone he’d fabricate a story to cover his tracks.

Tattersall pleaded guilty last week at the Elgin Street courthouse to touching a minor for sexual purposes and sex assault and is now scheduled for sexual behaviour testing at the Royal Ottawa. He will be sentenced later this year.

Tattersall’s employer Nav Canada did not comment on the case, saying they have a policy not to talk about employees.

The sex predator is on bail awaiting his fate and is prohibited from being anywhere near children under the age of 16.

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A 17-year-old boy on trial for a 2016 stabbing in the ByWard Market has been acquitted after prosecutors failed to establish it was intentional.

The teen, who testified in his own defence, said two men and a women he was trying to buy drugs from had started the fight — not him.

He was outnumbered and felt scared, court heard. He called his attackers monsters.

After falling to the ground a second time during the fight, the boy told court he saw a knife on the ground and grabbed it and that he has no memory of what happened that night until he was put in the backseat of an Ottawa police cruiser.

A 30-year-old man was left with stab wounds to his chest and arm. He bled profusely at the corner of Rideau and Dalhousie Street and private security guards applied to pressure to his wounds until paramedics arrived.

It was one of the private security guards — there were three across the street — who captured the suspect around 10:40 p.m. on Nov. 7, 2016.

The private security guards testified as Crown witnesses but their evidence was at odds.

One security guard said he stepped on the boy’s hand once the kid was grounded, forcing the boy to release the knife. The security guard said he then kicked the knife away. He told court the knife was an open-blade knife, and not a folding one.

But his fellow security guard testified that they recovered the knife from a homeless man who handed it over as he was passing by.

Though the boy had a knife in his hand during the fight, the judge ruled the Crown did not prove the stabbing was intentional or even voluntary.

“It is clear that the defendant was closely involved with (the victim) while holding the knife. But I simply do not know how the knife held by the defendant came into contact with him. (The victim) could have fallen or stumbled into the defendant. The defendant could have been pushed into (the victim) by the woman,” Ontario Court Justice P.K. Doody wrote in a March 8 ruling.

The judge also noted that two security guards testified that the boy suspect was lying on top of the victim on the ground.

“He could have fallen onto him, with the knife coming in contact with (the victim) accidentally. He could have struck him in a reflex action. Any of those possibilities is a reasonable inference on the basis of the evidence I heard and the facts I am able to find. None is speculation. And if any were correct, the defendant would not have intended to stab (the victim).”

The judge also said there was an air of reality to the teen’s self-defence argument, but it was a moot point because the stabbing was ruled unintentional.

The teen, successfully represented by defence lawyer Ash Duvadie, was acquitted on all charges — including aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and possession of a weapon.

The victim has since died, but his death had nothing to do with his wounds from the 2016 stabbing.

The coroner’s office has requested a quality-of-care review at CHEO in the case of a 13-year-old Indigenous girl who had been admitted to the hospital four times in the days leading to her 2017 suicide at an Ottawa group home.

Medical records reviewed by this newspaper chronicle the sad, final days of Amy Jane Owen.

Her death last year, and the death of another Indigenous teen days later at a different Ottawa group home, drew fresh attention to the stories of children who are in care of the state, hundreds of miles from their northern Ontario homes.

Owen, who was from the Poplar Hill First Nation, was first sent to the children’s hospital April 1, 2017 after staff at her group home reported multiple self-inflicted cuts to her forearms.

The girl’s medical history includes multiple suicide attempts, anxiety and PTSD.

She told CHEO staff that her suicidal tendencies were rising and went so far as to say that she was planning to hang herself in her room. She also told medical staff that she had once already tried to hang herself, according to the coroner’s investigation report.

Owen was admitted for psychiatric help and monitored for three days. The hospital discharged her on April 4, 2017.

She returned to the hospital later that same night with three new self-inflicted wounds.

Emergency department records for that specific visit indicated that she no longer had thoughts of suicide or self-harm, and staff noted she had said things were going well at the group home.

Four days later, Owen was admitted to the hospital again for self-inflicted wounds.

She told an emergency department doctor that she just learned that one of her friends had tried to kill herself. Owen was treated then assessed by a crisis-intervention social worker at the hospital. The hospital social worker concluded that Owen did not have “any active suicidal ideation” and was advised to “followup with multiple available resources in the community.”

Owen returned again to CHEO’s emergency department with a laceration to her left arm. Hospital records, filed by staff, indicate the girl had a “low mood” and poor sleep, but that she denied any suicidal tendencies.

The 13-year-old was discharged without further mental-health or crisis-intervention assessments at the hospital.

CHEO staff told the girl to follow up with a family doctor in 10 days to remove her sutures, according to the coroner’s investigation report.

APTN’s Kenneth Jackson was the first to report on the coroner’s investigation, as part of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network’s probe into the deaths of girls at group homes.

Days after her final release from CHEO, Owen continued to self-harm at the group home that had difficulty figuring out round-the-clock, one-on-one supervision, according to the coroner’s report.

In fact, she was supposed to go to a group home for high-risk teens on April 13, but there was no room.

Days later, on the afternoon of April 17, there were only three workers at the group home to supervise four troubled kids. A fourth worker had left at 1:30 p.m. that day to pick up another kid.

Staff reported they last saw Owen in her bedroom at 2:45 p.m. on April 17. She had been left alone in her bedroom for an hour.

Staff say they checked on her at 3:45 p.m. Despite staff attempts to revive her, she had taken her own life and was pronounced dead at 5:10 p.m.

Toxicology results showed the teen had no illegal drugs in her system, according to the coroner’s report.

“This is the case of a 13-year-old First Nations girl with previous depression and suicidal ideation who hung herself in a designated children’s group home. … Given the patient’s multiple psychiatric admissions for suicide ideation, and recurrent ED (emergency department) visits for self-harm, a hospital quality of care review is recommended),” the coroner’s report states.

CHEO’s review of how they handled the case will be incorporated into the coroner’s final investigation report.

The hospital said it couldn’t comment on the case, citing privacy laws.

Sometimes, James Cavanagh’s search for truth begins with a lie.

And it came during the Crown attorney’s cross-examination of the accused ringleader in a vicious 2015 kidnapping and sex-shame attack of a young Congolese woman.

The degrading attack was broadcast on Facebook in a series of graphic videos. The young woman, half naked, is seen crying as she’s berated for having sex with one of the accused’s boyfriends. In another video, the terrified woman, who was allegedly kidnapped at knife point, is seen undressed on a bed as someone applies hair-removal cream to her pubic hair.

The accused ringleader, Eunice “Chou Chou” Ilunga, 43, took the stand in her own defence and under cross-examination on Monday admitted to lying to police days after the attack.

One of her key lies was that she told police in July 2015 that the alleged victim opened the door to her apartment, which, as the prosecutor noted, was a lie about Ilunga having permission to enter the apartment.

In fact, Ilunga testified, she actually had a key and entered the apartment without the alleged victim’s consent.

Updated: Accused in Ottawa sex-shame attack says she and complainant had mother-daughter relationship

“You chose to lie to the police officer,” the prosecutor pressed.

“Yes,” she replied.

“You’re a few feet away, looking at the officer in the eye, and you lie?”

“Yeah.”

Ilunga told court that she lied to police on the advice of her sister.

The accused ringleader also had trouble with her story about when she saw the phone video of her boyfriend having sex with the alleged victim. It is this sex video that the prosecution contends infuriated Ilunga, who admitted to slashing the alleged victim’s couch with a knife, breaking her chair and kicking the TV over for good measure before leaving the apartment.

But Ilunga says she saw the sex video in a backyard, and nowhere near the scene of the alleged home invasion and kidnapping. She also said she was confused about where she saw the video and had memory problems. She also said watching the sex video made her anything but angry. In fact, she said, it felt as if a soft breeze had calmed her heart.

The prosecutor declared that her story made no sense, and that she was in fact furious.

The accused said she was already angry before she saw the video.

The sex-shame attack has shaken Ottawa’s tight-knit Congolese community.

The case against Ilunga, Safi “Lolo” Mahinja, 27, and Sandrine Tomba-Kalema, 37, is anchored in videos of the attacks that court heard left the young woman fearing for her life.

In a video after the attack, the accused are seen and heard singing along to a song on the radio as they are driving away. They made up their own lyrics to Brigade’s Affaire de la rencune Rondo and by doing so documented their attack, according to the Crown.

All of the accused have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and sexual assault in the alleged revenge plot in which a 21-year-old woman was targeted for having sex with another woman’s boyfriend. The judge-alone trial continues Tuesday.

The accused ringleader on trial for the 2015 kidnapping and sex-shame attack of a young Congolese woman testified on Tuesday that she treated the alleged victim like a daughter.

“She was like my daughter and I was like her mother,” Eunice “Chou Chou” Ilunga, 43, told court.

The prosecutor found her testimony hard to believe in the face of evidence that Ilunga threatened the alleged victim — telling her she was going to post videos of the attack online.

Again and again, Ilunga denied the threat, saying: “I was just speaking to scare her.”

The attack was later posted on Facebook in a series of graphic videos, according to evidence presented in court. The young woman, half naked, is seen crying as she’s berated for having sex with Ilunga’s boyfriend.

Accused ringleader in Ottawa sex-shaming attack lied to police, court hears

In another video, the woman, who was allegedly kidnapped at knife point, is seen undressed on a bed as someone applies hair-removal cream to her pubic hair.

Under cross-examination by Crown attorney James Cavanagh, Ilunga denied she posted the videos.

In fact, she claimed she had no idea who accessed the videos from her cellphone to post them on Facebook.

Ilunga admitted on the stand that she applied hair-removal cream to the alleged victim’s pubic hair but said it was done with consent.

She also admitted she slashed the woman’s couch with a knife before leaving her apartment, court heard.

Asked about the knife in question, Ilunga testified: “I’m not a criminal who walks around with a knife.”

Ilunga also admitted on the stand to lying to police days after the July 2015 attack. Back then, she told police the alleged victim had opened her apartment door. In fact, Ilunga told court she got a key to the apartment and entered it without consent during the alleged kidnapping.

Ilunga has denied the kidnapping, claiming the young woman consented to go with her to another home, where she was subjected to the attack captured on video.

Ilunga also had trouble recalling where and when she first saw a phone video of her much younger boyfriend having sex with the alleged victim, who was 21 at the time. It is this video that launched Ilunga’s revenge attack, according to the Crown.

She testified that the video made her anything but angry. She told court that it instead made her calm, like a soft breeze in the backyard.

She also testified she has no criminal record. Asked about a 2003 conviction for assault causing bodily harm, she said she couldn’t recall.

“It doesn’t ring a bell,” Ilunga told court after the prosecutor detailed her sentence, which included 700 days of probation.

She also couldn’t recall being charged with assault with a weapon, a charge that was withdrawn years ago.

“I’m not a criminal with a weapon. I spend my life with children — not arms,” she testified.

The complainant also testified at trial, and her evidence prompted the Crown to drop its case against one of Ilunga’s alleged accomplices.

The case against the alleged accomplice was dropped after the complainant testified that one of the accused was actually trying to help her, not harm her.

The case has shaken Ottawa’s tight-knit Congolese community.

The trial against Ilunga, Safi “Lolo” Mahinja, 27, and Sandrine Tomba-Kalema, 37, is anchored in videos of the attacks that court heard left the young woman fearing for her life.

All of the accused have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault and publishing intimate images without consent.

The judge-alone trial continues.

The Ottawa man arrested on charges that he sexually assaulted women on city buses has been banned from riding OC Transpo while he awaits trial.

Mohamad El-Husseini, 37, won bail on Thursday after his first court appearance on four counts of sexual assault.

El-Husseini was released on bail conditions that require him to surrender his passport and stay clear of all OC Transpo stations and property — including future LRT routes.

Police allege El-Husseini repeatedly sat beside women on buses and brushed against their legs, touched their thighs with his hand, or touched their feet with his. The alleged gropings happened throughout the last year.

Police are still investigating to see if there are more alleged victims and the accused is required to live with his family as he awaits trial.

His father and brother attended court Thursday to show support, and the accused was granted release without a deposit on his $1,000 bond.

The accused had trouble following the court proceedings and needed a translator.

Brian Scollard died trying to steal another man’s weed.

It was just after 9 p.m. on Wednesday, and Scollard, 36, along with an accomplice, knocked at the door of a house on Covington Place, a normally quiet street.

Armed with a hammer and bear spray, they stormed in, allegedly looking for weed. But their target, a man in his early 20s, fought them off and knifed Scollard several times, according to the police investigation into the home invasion gone wrong.

Someone at the home called 911 and the 24-year-old man was taken into police custody.

Homicide detectives had initially treated the man as a homicide suspect but released him without charges minutes before he was scheduled to appear in court.

The man, who turned himself in to police Wednesday night, has expressed relief, according to his defence lawyer, Paolo Giancaterino.

“He’s looking forward to putting this behind him,” Giancaterino said.

Scollard, who died of his injuries and was pronounced dead in hospital, has previous assault and drug-related convictions.

Police will continue to investigate his death as the city’s 10th homicide.

On Thursday morning, patrol officers along Covington Place had blocked off the residential crescent on either side of the house where the homicide occurred.

When one neighbour heard on the news that there had been a homicide, she told a reporter she immediately thought of that house, which she said was rented by four or five men in their 20s or early 30s. The tenants, who stood out on what’s otherwise a family-oriented street, had newer vehicles but used a bedsheet as a curtain, she said.

“I said, it’s the guys. It’s such a quiet street. No one knows them. They’re not connected to the street. They don’t chat.”

Police investigate a homicide on Covington Place in the Centrepointe district.

Several other neighbours out walking their dogs or heading to work said that they had suspected drug activity was going on at the home.

“There were always cars going in and out,” one said. “Nice cars.”

On Wednesday night, one longtime resident said he saw his street lit up by the lights of about a dozen police cars as paramedics appeared to be performing CPR on a man in the house’s cluttered garage. He wondered if their efforts were in vain because the man was loaded into an ambulance but it didn’t race away.

Bob Chiarelli expressed cautious optimism at his nomination rally in Ottawa West-Nepean on Saturday, telling supporters they will need to fight hard to retain the provincial government on June 7.

The political veteran reminded his supporters that back in 1987 he was the first Liberal to win the riding since Confederation and, “I’m not letting go.”

“We’re going to deliver the bacon,” the cabinet minister told a packed sports pub on Merivale Road.

Several Ottawa-area Liberal candidates, including Attorney General Yasir Naqvi, attended the boisterous event.

Chiarelli, the minister of infrastructure, wasted no time taking on his political rivals, charging that while the NDP is stealing the Liberal platform, Tory MPP Lisa MacLeod in neighbouring Nepean-Carleton riding is stealing the Liberal record. Standing on stage with Premier Kathleen Wynne looking on, he referred to a MacLeod brochure that said she had opened 20 schools since elected to Queen’s Park.

“(Lisa McLeod) may have cut the ribbon, but Kathleen Wynne delivered the cheque,” Chiarelli said to much applause.

MacLeod responded to Chiarelli’s remarks when reached by this newspaper on Saturday.

“Bob Chiarelli, just like the Wynne government, has passed his best before date,” she said. “If all they can do is attack me, then they have absolutely no ideas left.”

Wynne also addressed the crowd Saturday, telling them Ontario has a stark choice on election day — either vote back in the invest-now-and-pay-later Liberals or face great uncertainty with across-the-board cuts under a Tory government that will leave Ontarians fending for themselves. The premier praised Chiarelli’s record as a “proven fighter.”

Wynne and Chiarelli warned that a Tory government could jeopardize their spending promises, which locally include a $1.8-billion super hospital.

The Liberal pre-election budget also injected $38 million into the annual operating budgets of seven local hospitals.

Chiarelli has held public office for decades, and before that he practised commercial law for 18 years. And while he stopped practising law years ago, he still uses the same system he refined at his old law office. Someone comes in the door with a problem, and he opens a file and tries to help.

“And I do whatever needs to be done to help. I enjoy serving the public and nobody’s second fiddle, everyone is treated equally … I enjoy serving the public,” he told this newspaper.

Veteran Ottawa West Nepean MPP Bob Chiarelli with his wife randi Hansen at Chiarelli’s nomination meeting Saturday, April 7. Gary Dimmock, Postmedia

And why should Ontarians vote in another Liberal government?

“I think the message is that we’re delivering for the people of Ontario in a financially responsible way,” said Chiarelli, noting that the Liberals have increased spending for mental health and hospitals.

Chiarelli heaped praise on his leader, saying Wynne is like Wayne Gretzky because she’s always one move ahead of the puck.

The former Ottawa mayor, who grew up near Preston Street, played university hockey in the 1960s.