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Old February 9th, 2008 #1
Alex Linder
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Join Date: Nov 2003
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Default Tom Winnicki (Canada)

City's 'biggest hater' gets 9 months in jail

By RANDY RICHMOND, FREE PRESS REPORTER

A white supremacist, who bragged he was London's "biggest hater," has been sentenced to nine months in jail for spreading "the unrelenting message of hatred" over the Internet.

Tomasz Winnicki showed total disregard for a court order banning him from spreading hate messages, Federal Court of Canada Justice Konrad W. von Finckenstein said in a just-released ruling.

Winnicki "has posted material that is entirely disrespectful of the Canadian judicial system let alone the Federal Court. The material is wilful, contemptuous, repetitious and contumacious, and shows a total lack of respect for the Court," the judge wrote.

"He has shown no remorse for his contempt. Given this, I find that his behaviour justifies a term of imprisonment of nine months," he ruled.

Winnicki could not be reached for comment last night. It was unclear whether an appeal is open to him.

The ruling, released late yesterday, elated Ottawa lawyer and human rights advocate Richard Warman, who first brought Winnicki's hate messages to the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 2003.

"Mr. Winnicki is entirely the author of his own misfortune," Warman said.

"This represents the culmination of three years of work by myself and representatives of the Jewish, black, Arab, South Asian and human rights groups."

The sentence should serve as a warning to other white supremacists using the Net to spread hate, Warman said.

"There are very serious consequences to breaking the law," he said.

Winnicki ended up in federal court because he refused to stop posting hate messages online.

His early, profanity-laced messages called for a holy war against non-whites and non-Christians, warned Jews he and others were coming after them and told blacks they should leave Canada now.

The rights commission investigated Warman's complaint, agreed it had merit and took the case to a human rights tribunal.

The tribunal heard the case last August and December. In the meantime, Winnicki continued to post hate messages.

The commission sought a federal court order to ban Winnicki from posting hate messages until the tribunal ruled.

In October, the court ordered Winnicki to stop posting messages until the tribunal decision. He refused, but altered many of his messages to attack multiculturalism and Canada's justice system.

The commission took him back to the federal court July 4 to answer contempt charges.

Von Finckenstein compared Winnicki's later messages to earlier ones.

"It is evident that both the form and substance of the messages are the same. They have the same vile content and the unrelenting message of hatred for Jews and contempt for people of the black race and/or immigrants. The obvious subterfuge to talk about 'multiculturalism' instead of 'Jews' . . . does not deceive anyone," he wrote.

Winnicki's troubles are far from over.

The rights tribunal ruled in April that he had violated the Canadian Human Rights Act by exposing people to hatred or contempt based on their race, national or ethnic origin, colour or religion.

His messages posted after that decision was made are the subject of a second contempt hearing set for August.

He's also to appear in a court in Toronto on criminal charges after weapons were found in a car on its way to a neo-Nazi rally.

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Loc...f-1681815.html
 
 

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