Lawyer argues charter rights don’t cover ransom demands
Somali man accused of abducting Canadian woman says wiretaps violated his expectation of privacy
A Somali kidnapper making ransom demands to the mother of a Canadian hostage should not be afforded charter rights that protect the privacy of his conversations, a federal lawyer has argued.
Federal prosecutor Croft Michaelson said the man, who identified himself as “Adam,” had no reasonable expectation of privacy when he made a series of long-distance phone calls to Lorinda Stewart after her daughter, Amanda Lindhout, was seized and held for ransom in Mogadishu with Australian photographer Nigel Brennan on Aug. 23, 2008.
Lindhout and Brennan were released 15 months later after their two families paid $600,000 in ransom through a private British security firm.
One of the men allegedly involved in the kidnapping, Somali national Ali Omar Ader, was lured to Canada in June 2015 at the conclusion of an elaborate, five-year RCMP undercover operation and charged under extraterritorial provisions of the Criminal Code. He faces a kidnapping trial in October.
Pre-trial motions in the case are now being heard.
“There’s something strange here,” Michaelson argued Wednesday in opposing a defence motion that seeks to throw out a significant portion of the government’s wiretap evidence. “We’re almost extending the protections of the charter to the hostage taker in Somalia who picks up his phone and calls his victim’s mother in Canada.”
He cited as a precedent for his argument a Supreme Court of British Columbia case in which the court said it was not reasonable for an extortionist to expect his conversations to remain private.
Similarly, Michaelson said, “Adam” — prosecutors contend that “Adam” was one of Ader’s aliases — could not have had a reasonable expectation that his ransom demands were a private affair. As a result, he said, Ader should not be afforded protection against the RCMP’s wiretap intrusions.
At least 29 phone calls from “Adam” were recorded by police before Lindhout and Brennan were released on Nov. 26, 2009.
Defence lawyer Trevor Brown has argued that the RCMP and the courts made a series of errors that rendered invalid many of the wiretap authorizations.
Court has heard that the man known as “Adam” repeatedly threatened to kill Lindhout unless her mother, or the Canadian government, came up with $1.5 million in ransom money.
We’re almost extending the protections of the charter to the hostage taker in Somalia who picks up his phone and calls his victim’s mother in Canada.