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SalAMI: guilty as charged
More than one year after 100 demonstrators were arrested outside a Montreal globalization conference, a verdict was finally handed down last week in the Opération SalAMI trial. The 86 people tried (charges against 14 minors were dropped) were found guilty on counts of mischief, disturbing the peace, illegal gathering and obstructing a police officer. They were found not guilty on a lesser charge of disturbing the peace. The defendants, who blockaded the hifalutin' conference of capitalist bigwigs in May 1998, tried to invoke the defence of necessity, claiming that the threat posed by economic globalization (and the likes of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment) is so grave that their illicit action was a must. The judge, however, did not concur and rejected the defence--although the convicts expect him to go easy at their sentence hearing, scheduled for July 6. "We think the judge is going to be little bit lenient 'cuz this isn't your typical crime," defendant Jaggi Singh told the Mirror. He expects to receive mandatory community service or perhaps a nominal fine. "Giving us community service is pretty ludicrous because that's what most of us do every day anyways." --Dominique Ritter
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