The Canadian Armed Forces’ Provost Marshall, Brigadier-General Simon Trudeau, reports that 93 cases of criminal sexual offences have been referred to civilian police since December 2021 and 64 are under investigation. The others were declined and while Trudeau offered no explanation, some police had concerns about the strain on their resources. An additional 97 cases reported to Military Police were not referred outside. [node:read-more:link]
RCMP officers in Alberta, Nova Scotia and Nunavut are about to begin field-testing up to 300 vest-mounted cameras which will capture audio and video for uploading to a digital evidence management system. Depending on the results, national deployment of at least 10,000 cameras is expected to begin in late 2024. [node:read-more:link]
Two Vancouver residents face extradition to India in connection with the case of four Indian nationals who froze to death last winter while trying to cross into the U.S. from Manitoba. “We need to interview them,” said a deputy police commissioner in Gujurat state. Two other suspected members of a human smuggling operation were arrested earlier this year in India. [node:read-more:link]
Toronto resident Kenneth Law has been charged with two counts of counselling and aiding suicides in Canada, Britain and the U.S. He is alleged to have marketed sodium nitrite, a common food preservative which is safe in small amounts but lethal in larger quantities, to buyers in possibly as many as 40 countries. [node:read-more:link]
Unsolicited calls offering consumers financial or insurance products are to be prohibited by the British government as part of a crackdown on the increased prevalence of fraud. The initiative is to be backed by an increase in the government’s fraud squad to 500 personnel from 120. [node:read-more:link]
Five years after a French court ruled that the evidence against him was insufficient and he was released from prison, Ottawa academic Hassan Diab, 69, was found guilty today in absentia on charges related to the bombing of a Paris synagogue in 1980. He originally was arrested by RCMP in 2008 and extradited in 2014 despite witnesses who said he was writing exams in Lebanon at the time of the bombing. Having reopened the case in 2021 with no new evidence, the France has issued an arrest warrant. [node:read-more:link]
Thieves an unsecured cargo facility at Toronto International Airport to gain access to an adjacent secured cargo-holding warehouse to steal $20 million worth of gold and other high-value goods which had arrived on an Air Canada flight earlier this week. [node:read-more:link]
A 33-year-old woman has been charged with three counts of public mischief as well as one each of fabricating evidence and intimidation for accusing Halifax police of using excessive force in an incident last year. A “full and through investigation” by a police oversight board found that the women had fabricated evidence and threatened a witness. [node:read-more:link]
Nearly 260 pages of emails made public this week showed that individuals who supported the blockade of an Alberta border crossing into Montana early last year didn’t like how the RCMP carried out their duties. While proponents of a crackdown called the blockading truckers “economic terrorists”, critics resorted to “political hit men” while others likened Canada to Communist regimes and called it “Orwellian.” [node:read-more:link]
Forty-two persons face a total of 442 criminal charges in connection with a year-long investigation into cross-border gun trafficking, the Toronto Police Service announced April 11. The joint investigation which involved, among others, the Canada Border Services Agency and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, also resulted in the seizure of 173 firearms. [node:read-more:link]
Two Ontario women were arrested on terrorism allegations today after returning to Canada from Kurdish-run camps in Syria where Islamic State suspects have been held for years. RCMP want them post peace bonds which could require them to wear ankle bracelets and participate in a deradicalization program. Their repatriation brings to seven the number of women who have returned from the camps but so far only one has been charged with terrorism-related offences. [node:read-more:link]
Police confirmed April 4 that they are looking for an Akwesasne man in connection with the drownings of eight migrants whose bodies were recovered from the St. Lawrence River March 31. He was last seen launching a boat on the Quebec side of the cross-border region close to where the bodies were found. [node:read-more:link]
Former Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials have told a parliamentary committee that successive governments have failed to act on the agency’s reports on foreign election interference for at least three decades. [node:read-more:link]
A resident of Surrey, B.C., faces four terrorism-related charges after one person was threatened with a knife and another’s throat was slashed April 1. Court documents from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada show that Abdul Aziz Kawam is charged with attempted murder, assault, aggravated assault and possessing a weapon “for the benefit of at the direction of or in association with […] the Islamic State.” [node:read-more:link]
Police in the Askwesasne Mohawk territory confirmed March 31 that the bodies of eight migrants had retrieved from the St. Lawrence River. They have been described as families of Romanian and Indian origin who were likely trying to enter the U.S. through the territory which straddles the Ontario, Quebec and New York borders. [node:read-more:link]
