Accused G20 ringleaders challenge bail conditions

Two alleged G20 riot ringleaders have launched a legal challenge of a bail condition barring them from participating in protests or public demonstrations.

Alex Hundert, 30, and Amanda Hiscocks, 37, submitted a court filing for a bail review on Thursday in Ontario Superior Court. They are among the 17 charged with conspiring to organize riots and vandalism during the G20 summit. Both were arrested in a pre-dawn raid on June 26, the first day of the summit.

Since their arrests, the pair has been subjected to a slew of restrictive bail conditions, including one banning them from planning, attending or participating in any public demonstrations.

In September, Hundert was arrested for breaching this bail condition — his second of three arrests since the G20 — after he participated in a panel discussion at Ryerson University called “Strengthening Our Resolve: Movement Building and Ongoing Resistance to the G20 Agenda.”

Hundert said Thursday the courts are overly vague in their definition of the word “demonstration,” interpreting it as including any public event where political views are being expressed.

He contends the bail condition has prevented them from engaging in their day-to-day work and violates their constitutional right to freedom of speech, expression and assembly.

“They had intended to prevent us from going to meetings where street protests might be planned and the Crown and the police have decided to apply it in such a way that says we cannot participate in our communities at all,” Hundert said. “The idea that any public meeting with any political views being expressed is a ‘demonstration’ is essentially what we’re challenging today.”

Hundert said his goal is not to have the bail condition removed, but to set a precedent and have the definition of “demonstration” clarified in a court of law.

“The filing is to prevent them from being able to use this condition in the future as a mechanism for preventing people from participating in their communities,” he said.

The bail review sought by Hundert and Hiscocks will be heard July 28, the one-year anniversary of Hiscocks’s release from jail on G20 charges.

More than 1,100 people were arrested during last year’s G20 summit weekend, the biggest mass arrest in Canadian history.

Since then, only 317 were charged with summit-related criminal offences and 59 per cent of those have had their charges withdrawn.

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Source: Toronto Star