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Report-back from court proceedings and rally
Click here for full version of this report-back.
July 26, 2009, Montreal -- On June 29th and 30th, 2009, the Montreal Police Brotherhood’s motion to prevent a coroner’s inquest into the death of Mohamed Anas Bennis was finally brought before a superior court judge in Montreal.
Although the Brotherhood, the authorities and the media try to paint the Bennis family as guilty of “squandering public funds”, wasting the court’s time and not knowing what they want, the reality is quite different. It is, in fact, the government and the police who are responsible for the delays and expenses, whereas the Bennis family has simply been asking the same thing from the start: WHY?
To defend their insulting motion to hide the truth from us, the Brotherhood (which represents officers Yannick Bernier and Jonathan Roy) is represented by none other than Pierre Dupras, the very same lawyer representing Jean-Loup Lapointe and Stéphanie Pilotte, the police officers implicated in the shooting death of Fredy Villanueva in Montreal-North last summer. Dupras also represented the six officers implicated in the death of Michel Berniquez in 2003, also in Montreal-North. One could say that he is an expert in the field of hiding the truth about police killings from the public, as he has already succeeded in banning the media from publishing photos of Lapointe and Pilotte (which had already begun to circulate on the internet) as well as having successfully blocked a coroner’s inquest into the death of Berniquez. An appeal has been made in the Berniquez case and it should be back in the courts soon, another case to follow closely.
The City of Montreal and the City of Quebec and their respective police forces (SPVM and SPVQ) were represented by Pierre-Yves Boisvert for Montreal and Denis Lavallée for Quebec. In response to a naive citizen's astonishment at seeing the cities’ lawyers sitting on the same side as the Brotherhood’s, Boisvert said coldly: “There are two sides, the right and the left.” Needless to say, they were seated to the right of Judge Claude Champagne.
On the left were Alain Arsenault, representing the Bennis family (and who also represents the Villanueva's), and Frédéric Maheux, representing the office of the Chief Coroner of Quebec. Maheux, who works for the Attorney General of Quebec, was the only government lawyer there to represent the public interest.
In the room were Najlaa Bennis, Anas' sister, members and supporters of the Justice for Anas Coalition who wore t-shirts bearing a portrait of Anas and reading “Truth and Justice for Mohamed Anas Bennis, Killed by Montreal Police”, as well as a few journalists.
During the afternoon break, the Justice for Anas Coalition had organized a rally in front of the courthouse to denounce the Brotherhood's motion and to once again demand truth and justice for Anas. Najlaa Bennis, Philippe Robert de Massy (from the Ligue des droits et libertés), Alexandre Popovic (from the Coalition Against Police Repression and Abuses, CRAP), and François Du Canal (from the Justice for Anas Coalition) spoke at the rally, demanding the public inquest and an end to police brutality and impunity. They also denounced the government policies that mandate one of three police forces in the province of Quebec (ie., Sureté du Québec, Quebec city police force, Montreal city police force) to investigate one another each time someone is killed or seriously injured in a police operation. About a dozen or so people were present (not bad for a rainy Monday) and many others who were at the courthouse for other matters expressed their solidarity with the Bennis family and their supporters in their struggle for truth and against police abuses.
City of Montreal lawyer Boisvert insinuated on several occasions that “some people” will never be satisfied in this matter, even if there were 10 coroner’s inquests, because the answer they’ve been given is not what they want to hear. He even went so far as to compare the Bennis family to a teenager who doesn’t want to take no for an answer… Shame on him and his colleagues!
All that the family and the community have been asking for from the very beginning is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth… except perhaps justice. We should note that of the 43 people killed by the Montreal Police since 1987, officers have been charged in only 4 of those cases (Griffin, McKinnon, Barnabé and Lizotte), and that in two of the four cases, the officers implicated were later acquitted.
It goes without saying that when we are fed lies, contempt and injustice, there is no way we will be satisfied! We will continue to stand and fight night and day for truth and justice with the Bennis family and with all families of victims of police killings, in Anas’ peaceful image. And we will NEVER be satisfied until our basic demands have been met. The Bennis family has always respected legal procedure and has always called on the community to fight peacefully for truth and justice. If the coroner’s inquest is halted before it has even begun, it will greatly discredit the justice system in the eyes of the public.
As Najlaa said to journalists during the trial: “This has been dragging on for four years now. They bide their time, using our exhaustion against us. From the beginning, we have done everything right. We have done everything to ensure that calm is maintained in the community, and called for peace in my brother's name. But this calm did not serve us well. Today, we are being laughed at.”
If the government had not waited so long to call for a public inquest, we might not be at this point. Perhaps a recommendation would have been made and applied by the government to stop police brutality and the Montreal Police would not have killed five more people in the meantime. The Brotherhood's motion is just lengthening the process and making it clear that they have something to hide.
The case will most likely be in the courts again in September 2009, when Mr. Arsenault will argue the Bennis family's case against the Brotherhood's infamous motion to cancel the public inquiry.
The struggle continues, now more than ever...
Sources:
- The presence of Coalition members and allies in court on June 29th and 30th, 2009
- The COBP's documentation of the Anas Bennis case (available at www.CMAQ.net)