Kevin Dougherty

Myriam Bedard, who won two Olympic gold medals for Canada, was ordered Monday to stand trial on a charge of abducting her daughter in violation of a court order setting out the conditions of joint custody with the girl’s father.

At the end of a one-day preliminary hearing, Quebec Superior Court Justice Pierre Verdon said the Crown had proven there is evidence a crime was committed when Bedard and her partner, Nima Mazhari, took the girl, whose name cannot be published, to Washington, D.C., from October until December.

Under the custody order, the girl, now 12, stays with her mother during the school year but spends weekends with her father, Verdon noted.

Verdon also contended that lawyer John Pepper, representing Bedard, had “rearranged the facts” in arguing no crime was committed.

Bedard, a former biathlete, was arrested in Columbia, Md., on Dec. 22, which is her birthday and her daughter’s birthday.

After two weeks in a United States jail, Bedard was returned to Quebec City in an RCMP aircraft. After a night in a Quebec City jail, she was released on bail.

Jean Paquet, the girl’s father, testified Monday he was worried when Bedard would not give a date for their return. He said he called police only after he had made several calls to the cellphone Bedard was using.

Paquet broke down Monday, crying as he read an email he sent Bedard on Nov. 17 after a 90-second phone call with his daughter.

“I spoke to my daughter, who was concentrating on what people beside her were telling her to tell me,” he wrote in the email. “It isn’t right to impose that on an 11-year-old girl.”

Bedard and Mazhari, with the daughter in tow, left for Washington at the beginning of October to meet U.S. political figures, claiming in a letter sent by Mazhari on Sept. 26 to David Wilkins, the United States ambassador in Ottawa, that they were victims of “bureaucratic terrorism” in Canada.

Bedard claims she is being targeted after her testimony at the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal.

She worked for a time in the marketing department of Via Rail Canada. She testified that an advertising agency Via Rail used, which was named in the sponsorship scandal, also trafficked cocaine. She also said Formula One driver Jacques Villeneuve was paid $12 million to wear the Canadian flag and that Mazhari, who is from Iran, personally persuaded then prime minister Jean Chretien to stay out of the Iraq war.

After Bedard's testimony, Jean Pelletier, who was named chairperson of Via Rail after serving as Chretien’s chief of staff, was fired from his Via Rail job, a decision he is contesting in court.

Under questioning by Pepper on Monday, Mazhari said he tried to contact John Warner, a U.S. senator from Virginia, and Wilkins, who resides in Ottawa, during the couple’s three months in Washington.

When Pepper asked Mazhari who else they had contacted, and Mazhari refused to provide more names, Verdon cautioned Pepper to let up – “unless you want to attack the credibility of the witness. And I don’t think that’s the case.”

The judge also noted that in forwarding copies of his Sept. 26 letter to top political leaders at the federal and Quebec levels, as well as to then United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, Mazhari had neglected to inform the one person who should have been kept in the loop: the girl’s father.

Crown attorney Josee Lemieux sought a publication ban on testimony at the preliminary hearing, as Bedard wants a jury trial and a publication ban would make it easier to find impartial jurors.

Verdon rejected the ban, but ruled the girl’s name and telephone numbers given in court cannot be published.

page mise en ligne par SVP

vélo ski de fond plongeon
Consultez notre ENCYCLOPÉDIE sportive