April 4




CANADA:

Hate-crimes trial of former native leader begins todayCase expected to
test laws that try to balance free-speech rights against protection of
equality and minority rights



Was David Ahenakew willfully promoting hate when he told a reporter that
Hitler was trying to "clean up the world" when he "fried" six-million
Jews? A Saskatoon judge will begin weighing that question today, when the
71-year-old former national native leader is tried on a rare charge
related to an anti-Semitic tirade in December of 2003.

Legal observers expect the high-profile case involving the Order of Canada
recipient to be an important and provocative test of the country's
hate-crime laws that have tried to balance free-speech rights against
protection of equality and minority rights.

Doug Christie, who took on the case last fall and has represented
Holocaust-deniers James Keegstra and Ernst Zundel, said during an
interview yesterday that Mr. Ahenakew plans to move ahead with a not
guilty defence. However, he won't disclose his defence strategy.

"I want to see the evidence they [the Crown] provide first," he said,
adding that the offence Mr. Ahenakew was charged with is an "instrument of
political oppression."

Mr. Christie also doesn't know whether the trial could take longer than
the five days set aside. "I won't know until the battle starts," he said.

The trial will primarily examine remarks Mr. Ahenakew made about Jews to a
conference at a hotel in Saskatoon, and then later to Saskatoon
StarPhoenix reporter James Parker.

Crown prosecutor Brent Klause said his case involves just four or five
witnesses, but the key is the testimony of Mr. Parker, who was the only
reporter present during Mr. Ahenakew's speech and later sought
clarification in a taped interview.

"It's almost Hitleresque in the way he speaks," Mr. Klause said, "It's not
a complicated case from a factual point of view."

He expects to take a day or two to present the Crown's case, but hasn't
received a hint of what Mr. Christie plans to argue.

Usually defence lawyers phone the Crown daily for updates leading up to a
trial, but Mr. Christie hasn't even responded to Mr. Klause's calls.

"We've been very amendable to a plea discussion," said Mr. Klause, who
added that the Crown isn't interested in jail time.

"What we'd really like is an apology," he said. "We want race relations in
this province that are friendly, not one where people are talking about
Hitler annihilating people."

Mr. Christie couldn't be reached for comment. Nor could Mr. Ahenakew.

After a teary press conference in Saskatoon to apologize for his comments
shortly after the incident, Mr. Ahenakew made further inflammatory remarks
in the July/August 2003 issue of This Magazine.

"When a group of people, a race of people can control the world media,
then there's got to be something done about that," Mr. Ahenakew told
magazine contributor Alex Roslin, who said he taped the interview and that
the comments were spontaneous.

Jewish groups and the Crown said the comments refer to Jews in a
derogatory manner.

"His apology that he did make was not proved very sincere," said Manuel
Prutschi, national executive vice-president with the Canadian Jewish
Congress.

Mr. Prutschi is pleased the Crown is pushing ahead with the case.

"The issue is not jailing people. It is establishing that a person has
committed a wrong," he said. "There are certain types of expression that
are really beyond the pale."

Ken Norman, a law professor at the University of Saskatchewan and former
head of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, said that even with the
taped evidence of the comments, the Crown is going to have to work hard to
prove Mr. Ahenakew set out to "willfully incite hatred and violence."

Mr. Norman said the Supreme Court of Canada's landmark decision 15 years
ago against Mr. Keegstra established "that only the most extreme kinds of
incitements to hatred should be the subject of prosecution under Section
319."

Mr. Keegstra is a former Alberta high-school teacher who taught his
students that Jews were "treacherous," "subversive," "sadistic," and
"power-hungry" and out to destroy Christianity.

Mr. Norman said that the Crown will have to establish that Mr. Ahenakew
intended to "gather support for his views."

"This case is going to be an historical moment," he said. "It's important
more than once a generation for a country to debate the things that are at
stake here -- free speech versus respect for racial and ethnic
difference."

But regardless of the verdict, the CJC still wants to see one punishment
fall on Mr. Ahenakew.

"We have been disappointed throughout this period that the Order of Canada
was not stripped from him," he said, ". . . In our view, even if it isn't
a guilty verdict, it should [be taken from him]."

The Advisory Council of the Order of Canada has said further discussion
about Mr. Ahenakew's membership will take place when the legal proceedings
are completed.

Susanne Kaplan, president of Saskatoon's Congregation Agudas Israel, said
she was speaking only for herself when she described Mr. Ahenakew's
actions as a crime against all Canadians, not just Jews.

"What the Crown is doing is sending a clear message that we won't accept
anti-racial or anti-religious comments toward any group," she said.

Mr. Ahenakew couldn't be reached for comment, but his lawyer called his
client is a "brave man" and said he has "suffered a great deal."

(source: Toronto Globe and Mail)