Accused in attempted murder case can’t have his passport, judge says

International student needs passport for visa renewal; his lawyer granted access to it instead

Though he’s still waiting for a verdict in his case, the matter of a MUN student charged with attempted murder was called in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court briefly Friday morning.

The student, whose name is protected by a publication ban, did not appear in court personally, and neither did lawyers or the judge, due to the current public health situation. Proceedings took place via teleconference.

The issue at hand was the man’s passport, which he surrendered to the court as ordered when he was originally charged and released on bail. A native of Iran working on a PHD at Memorial University, the man’s student visa is set to expire and his lawyer, Mark Gruchy, had asked the court for access to the passport somehow, in order to complete the process of visa renewal.

Prosecutor Jude Hall applied to the court for the man’s bail conditions to be confirmed, specifically relating to the passport remaining in court custody.

Justice Vikas Khaladkar agreed with the application, ordering the passport to be transferred from Provincial Court to Supreme Court, where Gruchy has the option to take it and assist his client with his visa renewal without the accused ever having access to it. Once immigration authorities are finished with the passport, Gruchy must return it to the court until his client’s matters are wrapped up.

The man has pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted murder and his trial ended early last month. A date has not been set for Khaladkar to return a verdict.

The student is accused of having tried to kill a friend in an attempted murder-suicide by throwing them both over the edge of a cliff at Signal Hill in April 2017. The complainant testified they had been hiking on Signal Hill when the accused came quickly toward him and grabbed him. They ended up about 15 feet down the slope, he said.

“Right now I think he was trying to kill himself and he wanted me, a close friend, to be with him when he was doing suicide,” the man testified, with the help of a translator.

When it was his turn to testify, the student told the court he had placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder in an attempt to console him, then slipped on the ice and they fell together down the slope.

Others to testify included police officers, a MUN professor, and two Farsi-english linguistics experts who gave differing opinions on the translation of a series of text messages the accused had sent his brother in the days leading up to the incident on Signal Hill. One linguist said the accused had written, “I want to stab myself and (the complainant);” the other said the accused had used a verb tense that suggested he was having thoughts or dreams about it but had no intention of acting on them.

Hall and Gruchy both told the judge in their closing submissions the other’s arguments just didn’t make sense.

During the course of his trial, the accused was charged with sexual assault in connection with an incident alleged to have also taken place in 2017. That matter is making its way through the courts separately.