July 13, 2006 - 18:33
White supremacist who defied court by posting hate material jailed for nine months
COLIN PERKEL
TORONTO (CP) - An unabashed neo-Nazi who defied an court order to stop spreading hatred over the Internet has been sentenced to nine months in jail for contempt, a punishment his lawyer called harsh.
In a scathing decision, a Federal Court judge ruled that Tomasz Winnicki, of London, Ont., had shown blatant disdain for the justice system in continuing his hate campaign against Jews and people of colour.
"(The messages) have the same vile content and the unrelenting message of hatred for Jews and contempt for people of the Black race and/or immigrants," Justice Konrad von Finckenstein wrote in his ruling released late Wednesday.
"He has shown no remorse for his contempt."
The ruling relates to Winnicki's violation of a Federal Court injunction last October ordering him to stop spreading hate via the Internet until the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled on a complaint against him.
The tribunal, which ruled in April that Winnicki, 30, had in fact violated the Canadian Human Rights Act, brought the contempt motion in a case heard July 4 on the grounds that Winnicki had violated the injunction by continuing to post hate messages.
Dominic Lamb, the Ottawa lawyer who defended Winnicki, said he was considering an appeal and called the nine-month sentence "really harsh."
"I've heard of a six-month sentence on a contempt hearing, but I don't recall ever reading any cases that imposed a nine-month sentence," said Lamb, who added his client was taken into custody on Thursday.
Lamb called it "particularly troubling" he wasn't given the opportunity to make any submissions on the sentencing.
In its April ruling, the tribunal found Winnicki's messages "portray members of the target groups as sub-human filth that are worthy of nothing but the highest degree of contempt and hatred."
In obscenity-laced messages on a U.S.-based neo-Nazi website, Winnicki attacked the tribunal, the Canadian court system, multiculturalism and the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Von Finckenstein was not impressed with the messages.
"He has posted material that is entirely disrespectful of the Canadian judicial system," he wrote.
"The material is wilful, contemptuous, repetitious and contumacious."
Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said courts are taking hatemongering seriously and said Winnicki has no one but himself to blame for his stiff punishment because he "thumbed his nose" at the court.
"This was of the most obnoxious, passionate hatred that one could put out on the Internet, and basically Winnicki just didn't give a damn," said Farber.
"He's not just a hatemonger, he's a person who couldn't care less for Canadian law."
Winnicki, who once bragged to the London Free Press that he was the city's "biggest hater," faces another contempt hearing next month for continuing to post hate messages after the rights tribunal's ruling in April.
He also faces criminal charges in Toronto after weapons were found in a car on its way to a rally in support of deported neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel in 2004.
Richard Warman, an Ottawa lawyer and anti-hate crusader who first complained about Winnicki to the Canadian Human Rights Commission in September 2003, said the jail term should serve as a warning to other white supremacists.
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/ne...tent=n071381A#