Charges stayed in Project Clemenza included kidnapping over drug debt
On March 31, 2011, a man was grabbed from the parking lot of a Dairy Queen in Montreal North, forced into a car and held against his will for more than a week while he was beaten with two-by-fours.
When Peter Whitmore was eventually freed by a Sûreté du Québec SWAT team, on April 8, 2011, the police found two men who appeared to be making sure he didn’t escape from the bed to which he was handcuffed.
The police learned of the abduction during a drug trafficking investigation that turned up hundreds of messages exchanged by BlackBerrys between the kidnappers and the men who allegedly ordered it. In the end, nine men were charged in Whitmore’s kidnapping.
However, what once seemed like an open-and-shut case came to an end this week with no one being convicted. That is because the nine (including a man who was murdered earlier this year) were among the 38 accused who saw a stay of proceedings placed on criminal charges they faced in Project Clemenza, a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU) investigation into the Montreal Mafia.
The charges were stayed on Tuesday at the Montreal courthouse without much explanation from the Crown.
Defence lawyers who represent clients in Project Clemenza believe one reason behind the Crown’s decision involves the long-standing refusal on the part of the RCMP, which led the investigation, to disclose how they managed to intercept more than a million encrypted messages that suspects exchanged.
Most of the charges filed as a result of the investigation were related to drug trafficking conspiracies, but the kidnapping of Whitmore involved considerable violence as his captors tried to get him to pay a $2-million debt. Very little information has been made public about the kidnapping but because the court case came to an end on Tuesday, testimony heard during a July 2014 bail hearing for one accused, Fenel Milhomme, 32, of Rivière des Prairies, is no longer under a publication ban.
Mario Ouellette, a member of the RCMP who testified during Milhomme’s bail hearing, said evidence gathered during Clemenza revealed the motive behind the kidnapping involved $2 million that Whitmore owed to Antonio Bastone, 54, of St-Jean-de-Matha, and his younger brother Antonio, 44, of Laval.
When the first series of arrests were made in Clemenza in 2014 the brothers were described by the RCMP as leaders of groups with alleged links to the Montreal Mafia.
“They are involved in the importation of cocaine and the exportation of marijuana,” Ouellette alleged in 2014 when he was asked to describe the brothers. Several charges related to cocaine trafficking that the Bastone brothers faced in Clemenza were also stayed this week.
“(Whitmore) had a debt of about $2 million to the Bastone brothers. According to what he told the police, he was at a Dairy Queen on Pie IX Blvd. when he was struck on the head. He was placed in a vehicle to be kidnapped and was held against his will,” Ouellete told a judge at the Montreal courthouse in 2014.
Ouellette said that, based on the messages intercepted during Clemenza, it appeared the Bastone brothers had learned Whitmore had inherited $1.7 million and figured it was time to collect. The kidnapping charges alleged the conspiracy to kidnap Whitmore began three months before he was abducted.
Based on the intercepted messages, the RCMP had reason to believe the abduction was carried out by Davide Barberio, 37, of Terrebonne, and Ali Awada, a 28-year-old Montrealer who was murdered in Montreal North in January. Whitmore was struck on the head as he got out of his car and was forced into another vehicle. Whitmore later told the police he never saw his abductors because his head was covered and he was blindfolded the entire time he was held against his will.
“It was (Barberio) who really managed things that week (while Whitmore was held against his will),” Ouellette said.
Barberio, who worked under now-deceased Mafia clan leader Giuseppe De Vito, eventually became the focus of the investigation and was placed under police surveillance on April 7, 2011. Late that day, he was followed as he left a gas station and parked his car in front of a rented house in St-Jacques-leMineur, a small town 40 kilometres south of Montreal at around 9 p.m. Six hours later, heavily armed members of the SQ stormed the house and found Whitmore tied to a bed.
Besides Milhomme, an alleged member of Unit 44, a street gang based in Rivière des Prairies, the SQ also found Hussein Abdallah, 26, a Montreal North resident who also saw all charges he faced in Clemenza stayed this week. The SQ also found a few two-by-four pieces of lumber in the house that were used to beat Whitmore.
Ouellette said that while Whitmore gave police a statement he declined to file a criminal complaint against anyone involved in his abduction.
The charges were stayed on Tuesday at the Montreal courthouse without much explanation from the Crown.