The Four Horsemen Belong Behind Bars

Photo: Wikimedia

When investigating any crime, investigators look for reasons to satisfy a motive. What factors might make someone likely to steal something, or to hurt somebody, or to commit murder? Searching for those reasons is why we have degrees of penalties in our criminal code. A man who kills another man in a sudden fight in a bar might be charged with manslaughter. A car being driven by a drunk driver that kills a family might be charged with vehicular homicide. But in situations where one can find a premeditation of motive, our laws hand down the toughest penalties. Premeditation is considered the worst possible factor in crime, since it demonstrates a willingness not only to commit the crime, but an understanding of the consequences behind it.

There would be considerable debate that the four mounties who killed Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski had a foreknowledge of the events that would lead to his death. But we now know that they fully intended to taser the victim, revealed in a damning email that has shocked those following the Braidwood Inquiry:

The e-mail, sent by RCMP Chief Supt. Dick Bent to RCMP deputy commissioner Al Macintyre, suggests for the first time that the four Mounties who responded to a call at the airport planned to use a Taser against Mr. Dziekanski — contrary to what they testified during the inquiry.

Mr. Dziekanski, 40, died after being hit five times with a Taser by RCMP officers in October, 2007.

The e-mail, dated Nov. 5, 2007, said: “Finally, spoke to Wayne [Rideout, the former commanding officer in charge of investigating Mr. Dziekanski's death] and he indicated that the members did not articulate that they saw the symptoms of excited delirium, but instead had discussed the response en route and decided that if he did not comply that they would go to CEW [conducted energy weapon].

The email now throws a light onto the four RCMP officers involved in the Dziekanski death that had heretofore not been seen. While the actions of the officers had been shown to be negligent, hasty, unprofessional, and outside of the protocol of proper conduct, the admission of premeditation to use the Taser means that the officers have committed perjury on the stand at the Braidwood Inquiry. In essence, the police officers sworn to uphold the law, truth and justice, have lied to all Canadians, to cover up their own shameful actions. Were they not RCMP officers, one might describe such obfuscation of the truth as indicative of typical criminal evasion.

Even the lawyer who represents the RCMP, Helen Roberts, broke into tears as she told justice Thomas Braidwood that her office received the email in late April, but did not open the CD until last week. Nevertheless, Ms.Roberts denies there was premeditation, despite the evidence in the email.

“I find the delay in disclosing this material to the commission to be appalling,” Mr. Braidwood said. “The contents of this e-mail goes to the heart of this inquiry’s work.”

All of the pieces of the puzzle seem to be falling into place as a result of this public inquiry. The contradictions on the stand from the testimony of officers that was different from eyewitnesses and to the Paul Pritchard video itself, and now finally the admission that the officers were anxious to use the energy conducting weapon on a test subject. Worse than all of this, it shows a conspiratorial evasion of the truth from the RCMP itself, which skirted issues, or else was negligently silent, complicit in the lies that were allowed to stand for years. We now realize full well why the RCMP officers appealed to the B.C. Supreme Court in a desperate attempt to exculpate themselves from any finding of guilt in this case.

Now the Inquiry has been postponed until September 22, when the four horsemen will be called back to the stand to face questions about this new evidence, and explain how what they said earlier does not constitute lying under oath. Not that we can believe anything these men say anymore. Nor the RCMP. Both have besmirched their reputation in this affair to the point of public reproach, and nothing short of charges against Constables Gerry Rundel, Bill Bently, Kwesi Millington, and supervisor Corporal Benjamin Robinson will satisfy us.

Was The Iranian Election Rigged?

The question has been circulating in the media and blogs since the results of the Iranian election were made known last week. Was the election manipulated in order to produce a favoured winner, or is it merely our collective wish to see change in the Islamic Republic? Although we know that reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi lost the election according to the released reports by the Iranian government, declaring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the landslide winner with 63% of the popular vote, many people don’t know exactly what evidence there is to suggest the rampant notion of election fraud.

First, to the so-called irregularities. A survey of Iran’s election results has raised questions surrounding the proclaimed victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to official statistics obtained from Iran’s Ministry of the Interior, the votes cast in many cases exceeded the number of eligible voters in at least two provinces. Another oddity is that Mr.Ahmadinejad won all rural provinces, which is entirely contrary to previous results, according to a study done by Chatham House in Great Britain.

The survey made four main observations:

• In two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of more than 100 percent was recorded.

• At a provincial level, there is no correlation between the increased turnout and the swing to Ahmadinejad. This challenges the notion that his announced victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent conservative majority.
• In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad had received not only all former conservative voters, all former centrist voters and all new voters but also up to 44 percent of former reformist voters — despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.
• In the 2005 election, as in the elections of 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates — and Ahmadinejad in particular — were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That makes it “highly implausible” that the countryside swung substantially toward Ahmadinejad.

So the above points to serious irregularities that make the election results “highly implausible”. But as Robert Fisk noted in Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s address to the people of Iran in his paternalistic, yet hostile, tone, there may yet be more reasons to distrust the election results from the very highest branches of power. That the Supreme Leader stepped forward to intercede in a contested battle that had heretofore seemed to be between Mr.Ahmadinejad and Mr.Mousavi, shows that the religious leadership is showing a great interest in putting the matter to rest; by threatening their own people if need be.

The Ayatollah asked rhetorically how the Islamic establishment could have manipulated the people’s votes. If the margin between had been 100,000 or 200,000 votes, perhaps one might believe it, he explained. “But when the difference is 11 million votes, how can vote-rigging happen?” As Mr.Fisk responds, that’s precisely the point for the protests. How the incumbent Mr.Ahmadinejad managed to inspire a decisive majority is far more suspicious than had he won by only those few hundred thousand votes.

Now, as though to distance the results of the election from those millions of Iranians now protesting them, the religious oligarchy is casting the usual aspersions upon the civilian protesters who are losing their lives in police battles. Suggesting that among the protesters were “terrorists”, the Iranian government has also accused others of being foreign spies, or the dirtiest word of all, Zionists. Before Ayatollah Khamenei spoke, the people of Iran felt they had the democratic right to protest; they felt their objections were based on irregularities to do with the process itself, or with President Ahmadinejad. But now the Supreme Leader has spoken, influencing any chance that this could be a “velvet revolution” against a corrupted democratic process. As Mr.Fisk writes:

But the Supreme Leader is not a stupid man. So why did he glue himself to Ahmadinejad? Could it be he is worried about another very powerful clergyman who lives in the golden-domed city of Qom, a certain Ayatollah Yazdi who has long feted and praised the aforesaid Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? And is it possible – it is, by the way – that Ayatollah Yazdi would very much like to be the next Supreme Leader?

Good reason then for Khamenei to stand by the President who insisted a halo shone around his head when he addressed the UN.

Because the fundamental conflict in Iran is being fought not on the streets of Tehran – a mere tragic, brutal sideshow that could soon become a bloodbath – but beneath the cupolas and minarets and pale blue tiles of the mosques of Qom.

Indeed, the figureheads on display for Iran, most notably being Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi, are more likely representative of a power struggle being waged behind the scenes by powerful religious leaders.