New evidence casts doubt in Peshdary case
While one member of an Ottawa terror cluster has moved on from the penitentiary to a halfway house, another accused member was back on the Superior Court docket Friday awaiting the latest ruling in a yearslong court case log-jammed by charter motions, appeals and secret government evidence.
Carlos Larmond was recently released from a maximum security facility in Quebec, but in the latest twist in the terror case against Awso Peshdary — who turned 30 last month languishing in custody at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre since his arrest in 2015 — a federal judge has now brought a motion to reconsider his own prior rulings in light of “new evidence” provided to the court by the Attorney General of Canada.
That secret evidence, which is not described in the ruling, raises a “procedural dilemma” for the courts, according to a decision made public recently by Federal Court Justice James W. O’Reilly.
“This new evidence potentially put in doubt my earlier rulings and presented a procedural dilemma,” the judge wrote, questioning whether the new evidence be provided to the Federal Court of Appeal or whether a motion should be brought forward for the judge to reconsider his original decision. Peshdary’s defence team of Solomon Friedman and Fady Mansour mounted a challenge to the validity of the original surveillance warrants issued to CSIS in 2012, and had filed an application seeking further disclosure of CSIS documents supporting those warrants.
The federal court dismissed the disclosure request and also dismissed a related request for the judge to quash the warrant, “even though I found that there had been material omissions in the warrant application and new evidence that should have been brought to the attention of the issuing judge.”
The defence argued in its application there were “material misrepresentations” made in the warrant applications as the investigation into Peshdary and other alleged members of an Ottawa terror cluster progressed.
The recent motion for the judge to reconsider his own prior decision was first brought forward to the court by defence lawyer Ian Carter, who was appointed as amicus curiae in the Peshdary case, a “friend of the court” who typically acts in an independent advisory role.
Since, the judge noted, filing applications is not normally under the scope of the amicus, O’Reilly took the rare step of amending the application to indicate the motion was initiated by the judge himself.
“In the unique circumstances of this case,” O’Reilly wrote, “I have decided that the new evidence should form the basis of a motion for reconsideration that is initiated ... at my own instance.”
Lawyers for CSIS agreed, according to the ruling.
As a result, the judge wrote: “I will reconsider my earlier decision on Mr. Peshdary’s motion to quash the 2012 (surveillance) warrant based on a new matter that arose after my order was issued.”