A man who was once described as a dominant figure among the city’s organized crime circles while he was a leader in the West End Gang has died of natural causes.

Richard Matticks, 80, died Wednesday after arriving at a Montreal-area hospital just days before. Matticks was known to have suffered from cancer, but sources who spoke to the Montreal Gazette differed on what illness prompted him to seek medical treatment.

Matticks was the older brother of Gerald “Gerry” Matticks, 74, and both men had, for years, been alleged to have acted as leaders of the West End Gang, a group of criminals who shared an Irish heritage and grew up in Griffintown and Pointe-St-Charles. While most alleged members of the group deny publicly that they are part of an organization along the lines of the Hells Angels or the Mafia, some do acknowledge, in private, they are a collection of men who came to rely on each other.

According to the book Montreal’s Irish Mafia, by Montreal author D’Arcy O’Connor, Richard and Gerry Matticks were part of a family that included twelve other siblings and were raised in Goose Village — a predominantly Irish neighbourhood at the time — adjacent to Griffintown.

“Like some other large Irish Catholic families from Griffintown, Goose Village and the Pointe, most of the Matticks brothers turned to crime in the latter half of the 20th century as a quick and easy way to escape their impoverished conditions. For Richard, it was initially truck hijackings, and later the importation and wholesale distribution of drugs,” O’Connor wrote in an email interview on Tuesday.

By the late 1950s, Richard Matticks had already served a significant prison term, for breaking and entering and, during the 1960s and 1970s, he and some of his brothers came to notoriety for hijacking trucks. Their reputation convinced the Commission d’enquête sur le crime organisé (CECO), a provincial inquiry into organized crime held during the 1970s, to hold a separate set of hearings to concentrate on the Matticks Clan specifically.

But the CECO hearings had little impact on the brothers. They appeared to gradually gain influence within the West End Gang after its leader, Frank “Dunie” Ryan, was murdered in 1984 and the man who took his place, Allan “Weasel” Ross was convicted in the U.S., in 1992, of conspiring to import and traffic in at least 10 tonnes of cocaine and more than 300 tonnes of marijuana. Ross is serving his life sentence in a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

In May 1994, the Sûreté du Québec arrested both brothers, along with 10 other people, as part of an investigation that revealed they had considerable influence within the Port of Montreal. The investigation, dubbed Project Thor, began after three shipping containers were tagged as suspicious as they headed to the port. It led to the seizure of more than 26 tonnes of hashish packed inside containers that were supposed to hold blouses and spices. At the time, the SQ called it one of the largest drug smuggling operations to be uncovered in North America.

Details that later emerged, as part of a public inquiry, indicated some of the people arrested would stop at nothing to take control of the case while it was before the courts. A prosecutor alleged she was offered bribes and her life was threatened if she opposed the release of the Matticks brothers while they were charged. The investigation also linked Richard Matticks to an apartment on Hutchison St. in Montreal that turned out be empty except for a telephone. The man who rented the apartment to Matticks had no problem identifying photos of him, but later claimed to have lied about everything after the brothers were arrested.

The case fell apart on June 15, 1995, when a Quebec Court judge ordered a stay of proceedings after determining that SQ investigators had planted evidence by producing four maritime lading documents as original evidence when it was clear they were copies that were faxed from one government organization to another. At the time, the prosecution characterized what happened as an error made in good faith. But the stunning court decision, which came to be widely known as the Matticks Affair in Quebec, led to the Poitras Commission, a public inquiry that expanded significantly and revealed the SQ routinely broke the law during investigations and lacked professionalism. The $20-million inquiry led to large-scale reforms of the provincial police force.

Despite the lucky break they were dealt, the Matticks brothers resumed their drug smuggling activities and were arrested again in different large-scale organized crime investigations. In May 1997, Richard Matticks was arrested by the SQ as part of an investigation into the Rock Machine, a criminal organization that was, at the time, engaged in a bloody war with the Hells Angels. Matticks wasn’t charged with members of the Rock Machine, but his case involved the seizure of eight kilograms of cocaine.

A month after his arrest, Matticks pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine with the intent to traffic and was sentenced to a three-year prison term and fined $50,000. The National Parole Board later turned him down for a release after Matticks was characterized as “a dominant figure” among Montreal’s criminal organizations during a parole hearing. In 2001, Gerry Matticks was arrested in Operation Printemps 2001, a lengthy investigation into the Hells Angels. It was later revealed in court that despite the attention from Project Thor, Gerry Matticks still held considerable sway at the Port of Montreal and used his influence to get containers out without being inspected. The Hells Angels reached an agreement with Matticks to get massive amounts of cocaine and hashish through the port.

In the years that followed his 1997 arrest, Richard Matticks managed to keep a low profile even though a few police sources described him as someone who was still considered a leader among the West End Gang. In 2006, his frequent presence at a bar in Pointe-St-Charles was one of many reasons behind a decision by the Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux to revoke its liquor permit. Lawrence Cooney, 45, a man serving a three-year prison term for beating a man with a meat tenderizer to collect on a gambling debt, was known to act as a bodyguard outside the bar before it was shut down.

In 2008, a Quebec Court decision made reference to how the SQ also investigated Richard Matticks as part of a probe dubbed Project Relève. The investigation initially centred on Matticks and a well known drug dealer based in the Eastern Townships. According to the decision, the focus of the investigation later shifted to a methamphetamine lab in the Townships and produced a few arrests, but Matticks was never charged in Project Relève.

The Parole Board of Canada has rejected a request from a Hells Angel who wanted to leave the halfway house where he is residing because it doubts his claim of having quit the world’s most notorious outlaw motorcycle gang.

Mario Brouillette, 42, a man who joined the Hells Angels in 1994, just as the gang initiated a bloody war with rival criminal organizations all over Quebec that dragged on for seven years, was informed of the board’s decision on Thursday. During a hearing on Wednesday, he claimed he has left the gang because he doesn’t want his son to become a third-generation Hells Angel. Brouillette’s father, Aurele, 63, is a Hells Angel as well and is also serving a lengthy prison term.

The younger Brouillette is someone the police will probably be keeping a close eye on after he completes the eight-year sentence he is serving for drug trafficking and taking part in a general conspiracy to murder rivals during the conflict the Hells Angels engaged in. Before he was arrested in 2006, in a drug trafficking case, some police sources speculated Mario Brouillette was one of the gang’s more influential leaders in Quebec.

As his sentence nears its end, the gang is slowly re-establishing its chapters after almost all of its members were arrested in 2009’s Operation SharQc. But during his parole hearing on Wednesday, Brouillette claimed he quit the gang a couple of years ago and has found a new social network by attending his son’s hockey games and hanging out with other hockey parents.

In 2013, he reached the statutory release date, the two-thirds mark of his sentence, but the parole board ordered that he reside at a halfway house until it expires. On Wednesday he asked that the condition be lifted because he felt it was unnecessary. The members of his case management team, the people who prepare inmates for a release, informed the board they believe Brouillette is sincere.

The parole board disagreed. In a written summary of its decision, the two commissioners who heard the case felt “we have not seen a change of your values in the identified risk factors (of reoffending). Prudence remains appropriate.” The board noted that as recently as December, Brouillette continued to receive Christmas cards from Hells Angels chapters all over the world. The board also has concerns over how Brouillette will make a living while he owes the government $500,000 in taxes on undeclared revenue.

According to previous parole decisions, Brouillette was involved in drug trafficking from age 16. In 1990, at age 18, he became a founding member of the Rowdy Crew, an underling gang based in Lavaltrie that worked for the Hells Angels’ Trois-Rivières chapter. Four years later, he became the youngest Hells Angel in Quebec after he was promoted into the world’s largest outlaw motorcycle gang and joined his father in the Trois-Rivières chapter.

Brouillette timeline

May 12, 2006 — Mario Brouillette is arrested, along with 28 other people, in Project Bromure, a two-year investigation into several drug trafficking conspiracies in the Montreal area. Police sources said at the time that even though Brouillette was a full-patch member of a Hells Angels chapter based in Trois-Rivières, he appeared to be filling the void left in Montreal after the gang’s Nomads chapter, led by Maurice (Mom) Boucher, was shut down by Operation Printemps 2001.

May 21, 2008 — After having reportedly acted as a bodyguard for octogenarian Mafia boss Nicolo (Zio Cola) Rizzuto while both were detained at the Montreal Detention Centre, Brouillette pleads guilty to being part of a drug trafficking conspiracy, drug trafficking and a gangsterism charge. He is sentenced to nine years but with time served factored in he was left with a 67-month prison term. During Project Bromure, police learned Brouillette was supplying cocaine to dealers in downtown Montreal, Sherbrooke and as far away as Thunder Bay, Ont.

April 16, 2009 — Brouillette is re-arrested, while inside a federal penitentiary, as part of Operation SharQc, the police investigation that led to murder and conspiracy charges being filed against almost every member of the Hells Angels in Quebec. The case brought against more than a hundred gang members alleged they took part in a general conspiracy to murder rival gang members while the Hells Angels were involved in conflicts with rival organizations, mostly during the 1990s.

Sept. 30, 2011 — With the statutory release date on his 67-month prison term approaching, the Parole Board of Canada decides to impose several conditions on Brouillette’s release. That includes an order that he reside at a halfway house for the remainder of the sentence. During the hearing, the parole board was informed that, a few months earlier, an investigation had been launched after guards at a penitentiary were told that Brouillette and a group of other “influential” inmates had taken part in a conference call where they allegedly discussed putting out a contract on a fellow inmate. The written summary of that decision notes that nothing came as a result of the investigation.

April 5, 2013 — Brouillette pleads guilty to taking part in the general conspiracy to murder rival gang members after the Crown requests a stay of proceedings on the 22 first-degree murder charges that were part of the same case. As part of the plea bargain, Brouillette was able to have time he had previously served, for crimes committed during the conflict, count against his overall sentence. His existing 67-month sentence was recalculated to a 96-month sentence, but he reached his statutory release date only months later.

July 4, 2013 — Despite a formal complaint from Brouillette’s lawyer, the Parole Board of Canada again ordered that he be required to serve the rest of his sentence at a halfway house. Brouillette claimed he was leaving the Hells Angels to reconnect with his son and to look after his elderly mother.

Feb. 19, 2015 — Despite hearing Brouillette claim that he has since quit the Hells Angels, the parole board rejects another request to he no longer be required to reside at a halfway house.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

A man who turned informant on the Hells Angels and helped take down some of the most powerful biker gang members in the province has been given a second chance at parole after giving his police handlers a scare.

Serge Boutin, 48, a member of a Hells Angels puppet gang called the Rockers while the gang was involved in a bloody conflict with other organized crime groups during the 1990s, played an important role in the February 2000 death of Claude De Serres, a man who was growing marijuana for Boutin.

De Serres was also secretly feeding information about the Hells Angels to the police. The gang’s Nomads chapter learned of this after someone in their vast criminal network stole a computer from a hotel room in Sherbrooke where a police officer was staying. The computer contained intelligence documents summarizing ongoing investigations, and one document provided enough details to reveal De Serres’s secret work with the police.

Boutin was instructed to lead De Serres to a chalet, where he was killed, by René (Balloune) Charlebois, a member of the Nomads chapter who has since died. Boutin decided to become a prosecution witness after he was arrested for De Serres’s murder and became a key witness in one of the many trials to come out of Operation Printemps 2001, which shut down the Nomads chapter, and in the murder trial of former Hells Angel leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher. Boucher is serving a life sentence.

In exchange for his testimony, Boutin saw the first-degree murder charge he was facing reduced to manslaughter, a charge to which he pleaded guilty in 2001 and for which he received a life sentence. He was granted full parole in 2007 and voluntarily decided to withdraw from the witness-protection program in 2010 because he felt it was limiting his freedom. But because of his life sentence, Boutin is required to follow a series of conditions and an agreement was reached between his parole officers and his former police handlers regarding his safety.

In 2012, he was returned to a penitentiary for his own security but the reasons behind his reincarceration were not made public, until now. According to a written summary of a recent Parole Board of Canada decision, Boutin, who was given a new identity before he was released in 2007, was operating an inn (at an undisclosed location) and had converted the business into a restaurant with a bar when he got into trouble. He assaulted a customer and ended up detained at a police station, creating a situation where he had no protection if someone from his past recognized him.

It was the third time, since 2009, that Boutin had generated concern for his own safety. In 2009, he was investigated for an incident involving alleged cruelty toward animals and he had previously refused to share information with his police handlers about a woman he was seeing.

His parole was revoked in January 2013 and, nine months later, he was convicted of an assault charge for having beaten up the customer in his restaurant.

“It is noted in your file that since your release (in 2007) you have had problems with according the necessary importance regarding the security concerns surrounding your status as a collaborator with (the prosecution),” the author of the summary wrote. “However, the people you associate with have not proven to have been problematic.”

Boutin’s parole hearing was held via a video conference to prevent his whereabouts from becoming public information. The two board members who heard his case determined that the two years Boutin has since served following the assault appear to have had a dissuasive effect on him.

One of the new conditions imposed on his release forbids Boutin from being inside a business whose main source of revenue is alcohol, such as a bar. But the condition would not prevent him from operating a restaurant that serves alcohol.

The board also agreed with a request from Boutin that he no longer be required to carry a certificate and identity card that parolees are normally required to present to police if they are ever arrested.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

twitter.com/PCherryReporter

One of the men involved in a daring helicopter escape from a prison in St-Jérôme two years ago is now facing a new series of murder and attempted murder charges.

Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau appeared in court on Thursday to face two charges of first-degree murder and three charges of attempted murder, according to court documents.

The charges stem from incidents that occurred in September and October 2012, and will be added to Hudon-Barbeau’s already long criminal record. The Crown alleges he encouraged, advised or otherwise helped his bodyguard, Ryan Wolfson, to commit the murders and attempted murders. Wolfson is facing the same series of charges.

Once a Hells Angels sympathizer who was rounded up as part of a sweeping police crackdown on the biker gang, Hudon-Barbeau was released in 2011 after a judge ruled that there had been unreasonable delays in the case. He ended up back behind bars in late 2012, charged with being in possession of a loaded firearm and with violating a court order by being in the company of a known criminal and possessing a weapon. Five months later, he participated in the daring escape in St-Jérôme, which saw him and another inmate, Danny Provençal, climb up a rope ladder in the prison yard and be whisked away in a helicopter that had been commandeered by accomplices.

Both were swiftly recaptured. Hudon-Barbeau would later explain his actions in a call to a local radio station, telling the host that “the treatment that they’re subjecting us to make no sense. … I am ready to die. My life is over.”

mmuise@montrealgazette.com

Eighteen men who are full-patch members of the Hells Angels, or underlings in the gang, have pleaded guilty to taking part in a general conspiracy to commit murder.

The guilty pleas were entered as part of Operation SharQc.

Included among the people who pleaded guilty was Michel (Sky) Langlois, one of the original Hells Angels in Canada when the gang’s first chapter was created in Sorel (the Montreal chapter) in 1977.

The people who pleaded guilty on Monday will be broken into three groups for sentencing.

Two men will be sentenced at a later date because they were on the lam for years.

Another group will be sentenced to time served (since their arrest in 2009) and another group will be left with nine months to serve.

Another five Hells Angels are expected to plead guilty on Tuesday.

One group of six men, mostly underlings in the Hells Angels once vast organization ‎during the biker gang war between 1994 and 2001, were sentenced to serve one more day in a detention centre on top of the time they have already served, the equivalent of 11 years and seven months.

Another group of nine, full-patch members of the Hells Angels, were sentenced to serve nine months on top of the time they have already served. ‎Superior Court Justice Andre Vincent ordered that the second group be required to serve half of the sentence before they become eligible for parole from a provincial detention centre.

Éric Bouffard, a full-patch member of the South chapter, will be sentenced on Tuesday because he has another case pending.

The guilty pleas mean there are only 27 people left out of the 156 originally indicted in Operation SharQc, in April 2009, who still have cases pending.

For example, Martin Robert, a young member of the Montreal chapter, will be sentenced to time served.

Below are profiles of some of the Hells Angels who pleaded guilty on March 16.

Michel (Sky) Langlois
68 years old
Member of South chapter and founding member of Montreal chapter

Langlois once served as the national president of the Hells Angels in Canada and was one of its founding members when the biker gang first broke ground in this country by creating a chapter in Montreal in 1977.

While Langlois managed to sidestep all of the major police investigations targeting the Hells Angels between 2000 and 2008, he has served time in the past for crimes committed while with the biker gang.

In 1988, Langlois, who got his nickname from his love of flying small aircraft, was sentenced to a two-year prison term for being an accessory after the fact to murder. He helped the Hells Angels get rid of the bodies of five fellow members who were purged from the gang in 1985.

In 1999, he pleaded guilty in three different drug trafficking cases brought against him that same year, including one that involved the seizure of 171 kilos of cocaine packed into a recreational vehicle, and was sentenced to a five-year prison term.

Eric Bouffard
49 years old
Member of the South chapter since 1998

Mugshot of Hells Angel Eric Bouffard.

Bouffard is perhaps best known for being at the centre of a scandal that generated headlines, in 2003, in Quebec when it was revealed the Hells Angels was friends with José Théodore, then a star goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens. A photo of Théodore partying at the Hells Angels former bunker in Saint Basile le Grande emerged shortly after the goalie’s father and brothers had been arrested in a loansharking case.

Before his arrest in Operation SharQc he had already served time for crimes related to the biker gang war. Notably, he was arrested in two major police investigations into the gang’s drug trafficking activities since 2001. In one case, called Project Ocean, the police recorded Bouffard making two deposits of cash, totalling nearly $1 million, to an apartment in Anjou that the gang was using for accounting purposes.

While serving a three-year sentence for Project Ocean, Bouffard attended school and completed college.

In 2003, he told the Parole Board of Canada that he didn’t endorse violent behaviour but that he remained loyal to the Hells Angels.

“I don’t see why I should be blamed for all the crimes of the (Hells Angels). Eventually, I expect to withdraw from this group, but the moment hasn’t arrived. I want to do my sentence as a Hells Angel,” Bouffard said back in 2003, just before he was turned down for parole.

Shortly after his sentence expired he was arrested again, in Project South, and pleaded guilty to taking part in a conspiracy, along with other members of the South chapter, to take part in loan-sharking.

Guy Dubé
48 years old
South chapter

Guy Dubé arrested member Hells Angels South.

Dubé established a court precedent, in 2005, when he challenged an attempt by police to get his parachute back after it had been seized while a search warrant was being executed in 2004. The parachute had the words “Hells Angels” on it and police often seize any gang  paraphernalia as supporting evidence in any gangsterism case.

At the time, Dubé, who previously taught lessons on parachute jumping, wasn’t going to be leaping from any planes soon. He was serving a 46-month sentence for drug trafficking and loan sharking. But the parachute, which he bought in 1993 and had, at the point, used for 15 succesful jumps, meant a lot to him. A Quebec Court judge ruled in Dubé’s favour after determining it was clear the parachute hadn’t been used for any criminal activity and that jumping from a plane with a parachute wasn’t considered an anti-social activity.

But one of the more alarming details to emerge during the case was that Dubé and another Hells Angel were the owners of a company that controlled more than 20 private ATM bank machines that had been placed in private businesses like strip clubs. The police alleged the machines were used to launder drug money for the biker gang.

Betrand Joyal
58 years old
member of the Montreal chapter since 1992

In 2004, while serving a six-year sentence related to drug trafficking, Joyal, an experienced farmer, told the Parole Board of Canada he was eager to be released so he could look after his herd of elk. On top of that he planned to help raise cattle for beef if the parole board approved of his plans.

Despite having been linked to an elaborate accounting system the Hells Angels used to keep records of the millions in drug money they were producing on a weekly basis, Joyal claimed he was merely a courier who delivered money for the gang.

He said he adhered to the gang for its organized group motorcycle rides and liked to hang out at their fortified bunker for fun or to organize dinners in restaurants. He was turned down for parole because he refused to quit the gang.

Normand (Billy) Labelle
59 years old
Member of South chapter and founding member of the Montreal chapter

Hells Angels member Normand Labelle.

In 1995, a plot was hatched to kill Labelle and another influential Hells Angel while both were serving time at a federal penitentiary in Laval. The plan failed and a police investigation revealed that members of a group of wealthy drug dealers, named the Dark Circle, had financed the operation. Several members of the Dark Circle were later killed as the Hells Angels continued to battle with anyone who opposed them in Quebec.

Nine years after the attempt on his life, Labelle was arrested in Operation South, a probe into drug trafficking and loansharking by members of the South chapter.

He only spent a couple of weeks behind bars before being granted bail in Operation South and quickly pleaded to being in possession of the proceeds of crime. He was sentenced to pay a $20,000 fine.

Dean Moore
50 years old
South chapter

During the biker gang war Moore was very active and the overseer of the Evil Ones, a puppet gang that often did the dirty work for the Hells Angels.

Moore served a six-year sentence related to the biker war after he was arrested in Project Ocean, an investigation where the police learned how the Hells Angels Nomads chapter managed the accounts of their multi-million drug trafficking operations.

While serving that sentence in a federal penitentiary, Moore became the president of an inmates committee and impressed correctional staff with how he managed to keep things relatively peaceful.

Stéphane Plouffe
46 years old
Member of the Montreal chapter since 1999

Plouffe was part of the Hells Angels from the start of the biker gang war and was convicted, in 1995,  for having threatened a journalist while media were covering the funeral of a Hells Angel.

Becoming a full-patch member of the gang appeared to have its benefits for Plouffe. Accounting records maintained by the gang revealed he had a hand in dealing 168 kilograms of cocaine between March 1999 and January 2001 alone. At the time, police suspected he was an important presence for the Hells Angels in the Laurentians.

He was one of the many Hells Angels who went on the lam in  2001 and avoided being arrested in Operation Springtime 2001. He managed to remain in hiding for three years when, through his lawyer, he arranged to quietly show up at the Montreal courthouse and plead guilty to a drug trafficking charge.

He ended up with a three-year sentence and owed $5 million to Revenue Quebec for not paying taxes on his undeclared revenue. Plouffe filed for bankruptcy while serving the sentence.

Related

• Operation SharQc: Freedom on the horizon for Hells Angels even as guilty pleas entered

Sylvain Tetreault
47 years old
Member of the South chapter since 2001

Sylvain Tétreault.

Tétreault has spent much less time behind bar than his fellow Hells Angels because he managed to avoid being arrested in Operation SharQc for five years — while learning to do things like scuba-diving.

According to an article published in La Presse in October, Tétreault and Gaetan Brisebois, another Hells Angel who was on the lam, managed to change their identities and were not exactly hiding as photos of their scuba-diving adventures were posted on Facebook, albeit while wearing scuba-diving masks. In 1998, police had Tétreault and another man under surveillance while they in turn were following Jean-Jacques Roy, a member of the Dark Circle. The group was made up of wealthy drug traffickers who were opposed to the Hells Angels’ monopolistic attitudes.

When it became apparent Tétreault and the other man were preparing to kill Roy, the police moved in and arrested them. Tetreault became a full-patch member of the Hells Angels while serving his sentence for the murder conspiracy, and he told the Parole Board of Canada that he was quite proud of the promotion.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

twitter.com/PCherryReporter

Eighteen men with ties to the Hells Angels, including two who were among the gang’s first full-patch members in Canada, pleaded guilty to taking part in a general conspiracy to commit murder on Tuesday, putting an end to yet another possible trial before a jury in Operation SharQc.

What transpired before Superior Court Justice André Vincent at the Gouin courthouse on Monday was symbolically significant in that two of the biker gang’s founding members in Canada, Michel (Sky) Langlois, 68, and Normand (Billy) Labelle, 59, were among the group who pleaded guilty and the land in Sorel where the gang built their first bunker, after chartering the Montreal chapter in 1977, was officially confiscated by the government.

The gang, which originated in the U.S., first planted its flag in Canada in Sorel in 1977 and the Montreal chapter’s members then helped establish other chapters across the country in the decades that followed. Langlois and Labelle were there from the beginning and, on Tuesday, they admitted they had a role in the gang’s most violent period in Quebec, between 1994 and 2002, when the Hells Angels sought to kill the members of rival gangs who opposed their monopolistic attitude toward the sale of drugs like cocaine, hashish and marijuana. The conflict resulted in the deaths of more than 160 people, including several innocent victims.

Another four Hells Angels are expected to plead guilty to the same conspiracy on Tuesday and a fifth, who was ill on Monday, has a court date set for April.

If the four guilty pleas go ahead as planned on Tuesday, it will bring the number of men who have admitted to taking part in the murder conspiracy to 86, or more than two-thirds of those originally charged with the conspiracy in 2009. As has been the case in previous guilty pleas, any first-degree murder charges the accused were facing were placed under a stay of proceedings.

The conspiracy charge is the basis of Operation SharQc, the joint police investigation led by the Sûreté du Québec that, in April 2009, led to the arrest of almost every member of the world’s most notorious outlaw motorcycle gang in Quebec at the time. The gang appears to have regrouped since then and recently assembled enough members to allow the Montreal chapter to restart, based on the Hells Angels’ international rules requiring that a certain amount of members be able to attend monthly meetings. And with the sentences gang members received Monday, the Montreal chapter is likely to have reinforcements before the year ends.

Six of the 18 men were sentenced to serve one day in a detention centre on top of the time they have already served behind bars since 2009, the equivalent of 11 years and seven months. Another nine, including Langlois and Labelle, were sentenced to a 9-month prison term on top of the time they have already served. Vincent ordered that the nine be required to serve at least half of those sentences before they are eligible for parole. Claude Pépin, 53, a member of the Montreal chapter, was granted bail in November and had to be returned to custody on Monday to serve his remaining day. Other members of the gang laughed at Pépin while he was frisked by a special constable before he was returned to a detention centre. Some made mocking hand gestures suggesting Pépin was enjoying the experience. Pépin laughed and appeared to take the teasing in stride.

The sentences are consistent with many of the other sentences already ordered in Operation SharQc. Robert Rouleau, a prosecutor who summarized the guilty pleas, could only use very vague terms to explain how the joint recommendation on the sentences were agreed upon because one trial in Operation SharQc, involving 25 accused, is currently in the jury selection stage and is scheduled to begin later this year. Most of the men who pleaded guilty on Tuesday were supposed to be part of a trial that would have followed. Two other men, Robert Bonomo and John Coates, have been granted the right to have a separate trial in English. A publication ban on specific details on the role those who have pleaded guilty had in the conspiracy is currently in place. Rouleau said the sentence recommendations were part of “intensive and complex” negotiations held over the past three months.

Eric Bouffard, 49, is expected to be sentenced on Tuesday and was separated from the group who pleaded guilty on Monday because he has another unrelated case pending.

Another two men who pleaded guilty on Monday, Sylvain Tetreault, 47, and Frédéric Landry-Hétu, 46, will having sentence hearings in November. Both men would have difficulty arguing they merited being sentenced to time served because both managed to avoid arrest, and lived on the lam, for years before the police finally tracked them down. Tetreault, a man who became a full-patch member of the South chapter in 2001 while he was serving time for plotting a murder, was arrested only last year while he was living under an alias on the north shore of Montreal. Landry-Hétu was arrested in March 2013, after police discovered he was living in a chalet in St-Michel-des-Saints. Eight other men are still being sought on warrants related to Operation SharQc.

Related

• Operation SharQc: Eighteen Hells Angels plead guilty to taking part in general conspiracy to commit murder

The South chapter might also have new life breathed into when the sentences ordered on Monday expire by the end of this year. But the gang won’t be able to use a bunker it had established on Verchères St. in Longueuil to hold its meetings. The bunker, which was owned by a numbered company controlled by a Hells Angel named Roberto Campagna, 52, (currently serving a 15-year sentence in Operation SharQc) was officially confiscated on Monday. The building was demolished in 2012 and the land it was on is owned by another man who, the court was told on Monday, had no idea the Hells Angels were using it as a bunker. The decision taken on Monday means the land can be returned to the owner.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

By the numbers: Operation SharQc

156: People indicted in Operation SharQc in April 2009, on several charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and drug trafficking. 

31: The number of accused who were charged only with drug trafficking see their cases essentially tossed out, on May 31, 2011, after Superior Court Justice James Brunton breaks the indictment into six groups, prioritizes their cases and decides the people charged with drug trafficking would be the last to have a trial, after several years. He decides that is too long to have to wait for a trial. 

64: Accused who had resolved their cases through guilty pleas before Monday.

18: Number of the accused, including several full-patch members of the Hells Angels, plead guilty to taking part in the murder conspiracy on Monday, March 16, 2015. The court is told another five will do the same soon. 

27: Men who still have cases pending in Operation SharQc, including two anglophones, Robert Bonomo, alleged to be a longtime member of the Montreal chapter of the Hells Angels, and John Coates, an associate of the Sherbrooke chapter. They are expected to have trials in English. 

8: Men still being sought for arrest.

3: Number of the accused died, of natural causes before they could be tried.

A St-Lazare resident alleged to be the leader of a Hells Angels underling gang that operated in the West Island was granted bail Tuesday in the drug trafficking case brought against him and five others.

David Castelli, 44, was arrested on Wednesday as part of an investigation by the Montreal police and the Sûreté du Québec that included the raid of a commercial building on Donegani Ave., in Pointe-Claire, that, according to the Montreal police, was used by the group as a clubhouse.

Residents of the normally tranquil neighbourhood were stunned to see members of a Montreal police SWAT team move in on the rented building last week. Castelli is alleged to be the leader of the Devil’s Ghosts, a group that the police said last week is tied to the Hells Angels. Historically, the world’s most notorious biker gang has not been known to have a strong presence in the West Island. In past years they have relied on their ties to other criminal organizations to move their drugs in the area. For example, during the biker gang war, between 1994 and 2002, the Hells Angels had several underling gangs spread out all over Quebec, but none were based in the West Island. However, police had evidence that one of the Hells Angels’ underling gangs, the Rockers, had connections to a street gang based in the West Island.

Castelli faces five charges in all related to the investigation, including three related to the seizure of a Winchester firearm seized in Pierrefonds on Wednesday as part of the investigation. He is also charged with drug trafficking — along with two other accused; Dean Madden, 51, of Wentworth-Nord, and David Manneh, 35, of Kirkland — in four different areas including Pointe-Claire and Pierrefonds.

According to a release issued by the Montreal police last week, investigators seized 70 kilograms of hashish, a small quantity of cocaine and firearms while executing search warrants on Wednesday and Thursday. All six of the people arrested last week, including two women, were charged with being in possession of drugs, with the intent to traffic, in Wentworth-Nord.

Quebec Court Judge Yvan Poulin heard evidence in Castelli’s case on Friday and made his decision at the Montreal courthouse on Tuesday. The judge agreed that Castelli can be released, while his case is pending, after he agreed to follow a series of conditions, including the requirement that a $30,000 deposit be made beforehand. Castelli is also required to inform the court if he moves from his residence in St-Lazare and he is not allowed to communicate with the co-accused and anyone associated with the Hells Angels or the Devil’s Ghosts.

Madden and Manneh remain detained for the time being and a formality hearing in their cases was scheduled to be held at a later date.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

The West Island is home to a Hells Angels underling gang with at least a dozen members that espouses the same rules that the world’s most notorious motorcycle club has used for decades.

A document listing the rules members of the Devil’s Ghosts are expected to follow was seized last week while a team of police officers, from the Montreal police and Sûreté du Québec, arrested six people, seized 70 kilos of hashish and carried out search warrants in the West Island, notably at a commercial building on Donegani Ave., near King Ave., in Pointe-Claire. The Montreal police have alleged the building was used as the Devil’s Ghosts hangout for months.

“Defend the club and its colours, no matter what the price,” reads one of the gang’s rules. The same document also indicates the gang uses the same methods as the Hells Angels when it comes to gradually promoting people who will eventually be allowed to wear the gang’s patch on the back of a leather jacket.

The police operation carried out last week was yet another sign the Hells Angels have gone back to using underling, or puppet gangs, to do their dirty work. After using a vast underling network during the 1990s, the Hells Angels suddenly stopped using puppet gangs sometime after 2001, when several members became prosecution witnesses in large-scale criminal cases. But in recent months there have been signs the underling system is back.

Besides the arrests made last week in the West Island, earlier this year Yves (Led) Leduc, a full-patch member of the Hells Angels, saw his statutory release revoked, and was returned to a penitentiary, after police spotted him coming out of the home of a man known to be a member of a similar underling gang.

Some of the six people arrested last week are facing charges related to drug trafficking and to several firearms the police also seized last week.

During a recent bail hearing for David Castelli, 44, of St-Lazare, prosecutor Éric de Champlain referred to information gathered by a police intelligence investigator and said the gang in the West Island is believed to have a dozen members. Castelli is alleged to be its leader and two other men arrested in the police operation last week — David Manneh, 35, of Kirkland, and Shawn Russell, 40, of St-Lazare — are alleged to be members.

Manneh is scheduled to have a bail hearing at the Montreal courthouse on Friday and Russell was released on bail last week. Castelli was also released on bail on Tuesday. According to an article published in La Presse, he has been observed in the past in the company of Salvatore Cazzetta, believed to be one of the more influential members of the Hells Angels in Quebec who is not currently incarcerated.

When the police searched Castelli’s home in St-Lazare last week, they seized a small amount of steroids, more than $3,700 in cash and a bulletproof vest. They also found a gold medallion with the Devil’s Ghosts name on it along with the 1 per cent symbol the Hells Angels in the U.S. began including on their leather jackets several decades ago. It is a reference to a quote made in 1947 by the head of an American motorcycle association while trying to distance his group from the Hells Angels by saying 99 per cent of motorcycle owners were law-abiding citizens. The police also found cards and documents with the slogan “Support HA (Hells Angels)” inside Castelli’s home.

When he testified at his bail hearing last week, Castelli said he owns a recycling company in Valleyfield and that his typical day is spent overseeing the separation of products his company recycles.

“It’s very tedious and labour intensive,” Castelli said of his work. His criminal record consists of one conviction, for counterfeiting cheques in Alberta during the 1990s. He also testified that he used the commercial building on Donegani Ave. as part of his work as a personal trainer. He said he has six clients who trained on the gym equipment police found inside it. In the past, he owned several bars between 1998 and 2006, including the Jailhouse Rock Café, a show-bar in Town of Mount Royal. He was interviewed by the Montreal Gazette in 1999 when he co-owned the Jailhouse Rock Café and said he bigger dreams of starting a record company and producing music.

Besides the gym equipment, the police also found a photo of Castelli with a member of the Hells Angels, two Hells Angels calendars, 227 grams of hashish, and a small amount of ammunition for a 12 gauge firearm. The police also seized the document that laid out a list of rules members of the Devil’s Ghosts live by.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

Some of the rules members of the Devil’s Ghosts are expected to follow:

The club goes before everything else.

Defend the club and its colours, no matter what the price.

It is strictly forbidden to use hard drugs like heroin and cocaine.

Never refuse to help a member or a striker (prospective member) in need (money, alcohol, drugs, etc.)

Silence will always be primordial for the activities of the club and its members.

Thirty years ago, the Hells Angels summoned five of their members to a quiet town in the Eastern Townships where they were slaughtered in one of the most notorious crimes committed in Quebec.

When news emerged about what happened on March 24, 1985, inside the Hells Angels bunker on a wooded hill in the town next to Sherbrooke, Quebecers woke up to what the biker gang was capable of in this province. As the bikers involved in the slayings were rounded up in the months that followed, it would have been easy to assume the gang was finished in this province. Only five ended up with life sentences for first-degree murder (about a dozen others who helped dispose of the bodies or get rid of evidence received lighter sentences).

Five members of the gang’s now defunct Laval chapter — Guy-Louis (Chop) Adam, Jean-Guy (Brutus) Geoffrion, Laurent (l’Anglais) Viau, Michel (Willie) Mayrand and Jean-Pierre Mathieu — were gunned down inside the bunker. At least two other members of the Laval chapter were supposed to be killed that day as well, but they failed to show up for the meeting. A sixth man linked to the Laval chapter, prospect Claude (Coco) Roy, was killed two weeks later, on April 7, 1985, by Hells Angel Michel (Jinx) Genest. According to testimony later heard during a coroner’s inquest, 41 members of the gang’s Montreal, Sherbrooke and Halifax chapters were present in Lennoxville when the men were slaughtered.

The bodies were dumped in a river wrapped in sleeping bags and weighed down by cinder blocks and weights.

The slaughter came to be known as the Lennoxville Purge and instead of signalling the beginning of the end of the gang’s presence in Quebec, it surprisingly became stronger in the years that followed.

André Cédilot, a reporter with La Presse when the murders occurred, said it was easy for the public to assume, as arrests were being made, that the gang’s history in Quebec would be short. The gang’s first chapter in Canada, Montreal, was chartered in 1977 and its members set up a bunker in Sorel. Instead of being its downfall, the Lennoxville Purge helped set the template for what was to come and helped turn the gang into one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Quebec, Cédilot said. He also covered other cases where the police rounded up large numbers of Hells Angels, notably in Operation Springtime 2001, and in 2009, in Operation SharQc.

“At that moment (in 1985) the Hells Angels were doing a cleanup to become a real criminal organization,” he said. “Before that, they were disorganized and unruly. They were like a street gang. After 1982, they really started to organize themselves. The cleanup came in 1985.”

By 1985, the Hells Angels had become partners with other criminal organizations, including the West End Gang and the Mafia. Those groups were more businesslike and expected the same from their associates. As the stakes got higher and the Hells Angels became involved in multi-million dollar drug deals, there was little room for sloppiness. Cédilot, who is retired, said he was the first reporter to do a story explaining the motive behind the Lennoxville Purge. It involved a hellscomplicated debt the Hells Angels’ Montreal and Laval chapters owed to West End Gang leader Frank Peter (Dunie) Ryan. But it also involved the Montreal chapter’s growing resentment over how some members of the Laval chapter were constantly partying, consuming cocaine they were supposed to sell and how they didn’t fit into to the plans the gang had for the future.

“The (Laval) guys weren’t following the steps the others were taking. They fit the traditional image of bikers. They were always partying, always high on cocaine. It was going against the new philosophy of the Hells Angels. The other Hells Angels wanted to be businessmen.”

What eventually became clear was that the men associated with the Laval chapter who weren’t considered future elite drug traffickers were killed and any others were placed in other chapters.

The proof of the change in philosophy came in the years that followed. Maurice (Mom) Boucher, who was recruited into the Hells Angels’ Montreal chapter a few years after the Lennoxville Purge, was a thoroughly organized individual while acting as its leader in Quebec. Also, many of the men who are currently members own legitimate businesses.

An undated photo of the Laval chapter of the Hells Angels, which saw five of its members killed 30 years ago in what became known as the Lennoxville Purge as the group who were not in line with plans for the biker gang to become a serious player in organized crime in Quebec.

The five who ended up with life sentences for the six murders have all since been granted parole. But they each took their own paths to get there:

Jacques Pelletier was granted full parole by the Parole Board of Canada, at age 58, on May 6, 2013, but it was revoked last year. According to a police intelligence report on the slaughter, Pelletier was considered to be one of the leaders behind the plot. He was also the person in charge of controlling other gang members who were brought to witness the murders as a means to send them a message to fall in line.

During recent parole board hearings, Pelletier has maintained that all he did on March 24, 1985, was point a firearm in the face of one individual in order to control him and then he burned one victim’s leather jacket with the Hells Angels logo on it.

Pelletier quit the Hells Angels in 1995, which helped convince the parole board that he was done with the gang when he was granted full parole in May 2013. Six months later, on Nov. 21, 2013, a woman approached a police officer on patrol near a park and a school (the location is not mentioned in the recent parole decision) and expressed concern about two men she considered suspicious who had been hanging out in the park for a while.

One of the men turned out to be Pelletier and the other was a man who had been convicted of armed robbery and was part of a criminal organization with ties to the Hells Angels. Pelletier was returned to prison for violating the conditions of his parole, especially one that he not associate with known criminals. He later told the parole board he agreed to do some work for the man that was legal, but he was paid $200 under the table for it. The parole board was disappointed because Pelletier had done essentially the same thing while on day parole, in 2012, and claimed he had learned his lesson. He is incarcerated at a federal penitentiary.

Réjean Lessard, who was granted full parole, at age 55, on Aug. 11, 2010, underwent a stunning transformation after he was convicted on five counts of first-degree murder. While serving his sentence, he quit the gang in 1989 and later stopped hanging out with anyone associated with the Hells Angels. By 2004, a psychiatrist who examined Lessard found that he had abandoned his faith in the Hells Angels in exchange for another faith, Buddhism.

He was granted day parole in 2008 after the board was presented with convincing evidence of Lessard’s change. A parole officer recounted how Lessard showed no interest at all in material possessions and his cell was always completely bare.

“It was an extreme situation. The most serious thing that can happen (in that milieu) is an internal conflict,” Lessard told the parole board in 2008 while confirming the theory that the motive behind the slayings involved the Laval chapter’s consumption of cocaine and the money problems generated by it.

When he was granted full parole in 2010, he was described as “a model of compliance” whose understanding of his religion “has permitted you to radically change your values and behaviour.”

Michel Genest was granted full parole, at age 51, on March 3, 2010. He quit the Hells Angels in 1994 while he was behind bars and serving a life sentence for killing Claude Roy, a prospect in the Laval chapter, days after the Lennoxville Purge. Genest, one of the members of the Laval chapter who was spared after he agreed to transfer to the Montreal chapter, arranged to meet Roy at a hotel on the South Shore and beat him to death.

Genest admitted to the parole board that Roy was killed for not following the Hells Angels rules against consuming hard drugs, like cocaine and heroin, and also because the gang suspected he was a police informant. He told the board Roy died while he was trying to get information out of him.

Luc Michaud was granted full parole, at age 53, on May 6, 2005. In 2001, Michaud convinced a jury that he merited a chance to be eligible for parole before 25 years, which is standard for first-degree murder convictions. He made the request through the so-called faint-hope clause, a part of the Criminal Code that has since been repealed.

“I sincerely regret participating in that slaughter,” Michaud told the jury in 2001 while denying he actually shot anyone that day. “I had no right to decide anyone’s fate, even if they were like I was at that time.”

He also told the jury he had found God after he was convicted and that the Hells Angels kicked him out of the gang in 1993 because he constantly criticized other gang members who were incarcerated with him. The jury agreed and decided to reduce his parole eligibility date to 15 years.

Robert Tremblay was granted full parole, at age 50, on Aug. 30, 2004. Tremblay followed Michaud’s lead and convinced a jury, in 2003, that he also had changed enough, since taking part in the murders of five men, that he merited a chance at an earlier parole eligibility date.

The police had evidence that Tremblay quit the Hells Angels in December 1995, shortly after an appellate court refused to hear an appeal of his murder convictions.

“My identity was the (Hells Angels). I sincerely deplore having taken the life of another person,” Tremblay told the parole board before he was granted a full release. “I am very aware that I have to watch out for who I associate with and that I have everything to lose if I return to the criminal world.”

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

twitter.com/PCherryReporter

The son of former Hells Angels kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher was released from prison by mistake on Monday, Quebec authorities said.

Francis Boucher.

Francis Boucher was serving a 117-day sentence for having uttered death threats against police officers. The sentence was to finish at the end of May.

Boucher, 39, walked out of Montreal’s Bordeaux prison at about 11 a.m.

Quebec Public Security Minister Lise Theriault called the incident “inexcusable.”

“Our priority now is to find this individual as quickly as possible,” Theriault said in a statement.

“Rest assured we are doing everything we can.”

Boucher, a former member of the Rockers, a Hells affiliate, was previously sentenced to 10 years for gangsterism, conspiracy to commit murder and drug-trafficking.

Related

• Hells Angels emerged stronger from Lennoxville Purge

Hello and welcome to The Story So Far for Tuesday, March 24.

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H.J. Heinz Co. is buying Kraft Foods, creating one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world with annual revenue of about US$28 billion. The Kraft Heinz Co. will own brands such as Kraft, Heinz, Oscar Mayer, Ore-Ida and other brands. Eight of those brands have annual sales of US$1 billion or more and five others log sales between US$500 million and US$1 billion every year. The deal to bring together the two companies, each more than a century old, was engineered by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital. The two will invest another US$10 billion in the new company. 3G Capital is the company behind the takeover of Tim Hortons by Burger King last year. It joined forces with Berkshire Hathaway two years ago to buy Heinz in a deal valued at $23.3 billion.

The Competition Bureau has decided not to challenge Postmedia Network Canada Corp.’s proposed acquisition of 173 English-language Sun Media publications, paving the way for the creation of Canada’s largest digital news and information source. In a release Wednesday, the independent law enforcement agency said it concluded the sale is unlikely to substantially lessen competition. It’s a decision that shows how much the media has changed – despite the fact Postmedia and the Sun currently own competing daily newspapers in major Canadian cities like Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton, their fiercest competition for digital advertising dollars has become foreign-owned companies like Google Inc. In a memo, Postmedia chief executive Paul Godfrey said he plans to complete the transaction in the next few weeks. “Postmedia will then be the strongest newspaper chain in Canada – a newsmedia organization with brands across four platforms ready to take on all-comers,” he said.

A black box recovered from the scene and pulverized pieces of debris strewn across Alpine mountainsides held clues to what caused a German jetliner to take an unexplained eight-minute dive Tuesday midway through a flight from Spain to Germany, apparently killing all 150 people on board. The victims included two babies, two opera singers and 16 German high school students and their teachers returning from an exchange trip to Spain. It was the deadliest crash in France in decades. The Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings, a budget subsidiary of Lufthansa, was less than an hour from landing in Duesseldorf on a flight from Barcelona when it unexpectedly went into a rapid descent. The pilots sent out no distress call and had lost radio contact with their control centre, France’s aviation authority said, deepening the mystery. While investigators searched through debris from Flight 9525 on steep and desolate slopes, families across Europe reeled with shock and grief. Sobbing relatives at both airports were led away by airport workers and crisis counsellors.

The two main opposition parties have warned the Couillard government against the temptation to increase the provincial sales tax as a quick revenue fix. But major business lobbies are encouraging the government to stick to its goal of balancing the books in the 2015-16 fiscal year. And another group, the National Coalition Against Contraband Tobacco, is calling on Quebec to crack down on the underground tobacco industry. At a news conference, the group quoted finance ministry estimates that 15 per cent of cigarettes on the market are contraband, depriving the Quebec treasury of $175 million a year and Ottawa $140 million. As the province girds for Thursday’s provincial budget — the second one to be tabled by Finance Minister Carlos Leitão — last-minute advice was pouring in from the parties and lobby groups.

And finally, a Quebec prison guard was suspended Tuesday as police tried to solve the mystery of how the son of former Hells Angels boss Maurice (Mom) Boucher walked out of jail two months before the end of his sentence. Francis Boucher left Montreal’s Bordeaux institution just before noon on Monday, prompting different views among authorities as to the events behind the headline-grabbing escape. One theory was that he benefited from an “administrative error,” while another pointed to Boucher using a “trick” to gain his freedom. On Tuesday, a visibly upset public security minister leaned more toward the latter, saying “there appears to have been a stratagem.”

Stay with us for more on these stories and breaking news as it happens at montrealgazette.com

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The federal government does not have to relinquish its gun-registry database to Quebec, the Supreme Court ruled Friday in a decision affirming Parliament’s constitutional right over criminal law. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that the principle of cooperative federalism — collaborative intergovernmental schemes for the national good — does not limit the federal government’s constitutional powers to legislate in matters of criminal law. The three Quebec judges on the court were among the dissenters. “Quebec has no legal right to the data,” said the majority decision, authored by Justices Thomas Cromwell and Andromache Karakatsanis. The Conservative government’s 2012 legislation to end the federal gun registry — and destroy its database — “is a lawful exercise of Parliament’s criminal law legislative power under the Constitution.”

A student taking part in a demonstration in Quebec City Thursday against the government’s austerity measures was reportedly shot in the face by police with a tear gas canister. The altercation was caught on video by a reporter from Huffington Post. Camille Godbout, spokeswoman for student militant group ASSÉ, said the protesters were being contained around the Tourny Fountain in front of the National Assembly when they tried to make their way toward the building. The video shows a group of protesters walking up to a line of police in riot gear. The confrontation took a turn once both groups seemingly decided to push back. During the altercation, an officer fired what looks to be a tear gas canister directly toward the individual.

The Couillard government is pledging to reduce the tax burden for Quebecers, but it won’t be this year, or next. Most of the major tax-relief measures announced in Thursday’s provincial budget will start to take effect in 2017, and be phased in over a period of years. Meanwhile, Quebecers will be absorbing the tax hits introduced in previous budgets, including hikes in childcare fees and auto-insurance premiums and a 50-per-cent reduction of the tax credit for professional and union dues. The government pegged at $141 million the savings for individuals from four budget changes beginning in the 2016-17 financial year. But the extra cost for individuals in 2015-16 of previously announced measures is $493 million.

Francis Boucher, who walked out of a Montreal jail on Monday, was back in custody early Friday after turning himself in to authorities. The son of former Hells Angels boss Maurice (Mom) Boucher surrendered while accompanied by his lawyer, Dimitrios Strapatsas. Boucher, 39, a former member of the Rockers, a Hells puppet gang, had walked out of Montreal’s Bordeaux jail in broad daylight Monday. He was serving a 117-day sentence for uttering death threats against police officers — a sentence due to be completed at the end of May. Boucher and his lawyer arrived at the entrance to Bordeaux at 11:50 p.m. Thursday and surrendered. At 1:30 a.m. Friday he was formally arrested by the Sûreté du Québec.

And finally, Radio-Canada radio host Marie-France Bazzo will be leaving the public broadcaster. She announced her departure on air Friday morning while hosting “C’est pas trop tôt,” a show she has been anchoring for two years at Ici Radio-Canada Première. On Twitter, Bazzo said disagreements with the company regarding the “show’s orientation” have contributed to her decision to leave on April 3.

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A chaotic morning at a Montreal prison may have contributed to the son of a former Hells Angels boss being prematurely released from detention, his lawyer suggested Monday.

Francis Boucher’s lawyer, Dimitrios Strapatsas, says he doesn’t have all the evidence yet, but what he has seen points to a tumultuous Monday morning on March 23 with prison officials dealing with several issues.

Strapatsas said four different inmates with the surname Boucher were housed at Bordeaux prison on the day his client was freed.

One of them was supposed to have been released a day earlier and had been forgotten.

“There was a rush to get him out as quickly as possible,” Strapatsas said. “Because he wasn’t on the list to be released, he slipped through the cracks.”

Guards were told to go get Stephane Boucher and Strapatsas suggested the paperwork wasn’t properly verified because of everything going on that morning.

“When they realized it, it was a little bit too late,” Strapatsas said.

Prison officials were also dealing with an influx of inmates serving weekend sentences as well as an incident in the “bullpen” area where releases are processed, the lawyer said. There also appears to have been a clerical backlog.

“The error began on Saturday the 21st, someone did not record the ins and outs properly and people who were playing catch up on the 23rd at some point dropped the ball,” Strapatsas said.

Boucher, 39, is facing three new charges stemming from the four days he spent on the lam: identity theft, escaping lawful custody and being unlawfully at large.

The case was due back in court for a bail hearing Monday, but was postponed until April 27 instead while lawyers wait for all the evidence, including prison video.

Boucher is serving a sentence that is due to end in two months, but Strapatsas says he would like a bail hearing on the new charges before his other sentence is completed.

“It’s a simple case but it’s a heavy case,” said Strapatsas. “Over 30 prison guards intervened at some level or another . . . there’s over 10 police officers that intervened.”

Boucher, the son of former Hells Angels kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher, was previously sentenced to 10 years behind bars for gangsterism, conspiracy to commit murder and drug-trafficking.

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A small, silent group of protesters moved through the halls of UQAM’s J.-A.-DeSève building on Thursday morning, 10 hours after police broke up the occupation of that building by demonstrators. The demonstration lasted about 15 minutes. All classes at that building were cancelled and such offices as financial aid were closed while staff started to clean up the damage. Some of the protesters gathered inside the school Thursday morning held a large banner that read “University isn’t reality TV.” Just after midnight on Thursday, several Montreal police officers made a large hole in a window of the pavilion entrance. The doors had been blocked with multiple objects. The occupants, who were denouncing the arrest of more than 20 people early in the day, fled via a back door. A sign was thrown through the window of a police van and four other vehicles were also damaged.

Montreal Canadiens coach Michel Therrien was inducted into the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League hall of fame last night for his time with the Laval Titan and Granby Predateurs. “It’s an important night for me,” said Therrien, who teared up when accepting the award. “It’s really emotional. I’m surrounded by people I have a lot of respect for.” He coached three full seasons in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, winning the Memorial Cup with Granby in 1996. He then coached four seasons in the American Hockey League before joining the NHL.

Soldiers returned to guard duty at the National War Memorial and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Thursday morning. In the wake of the October slaying of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, the guards were being guarded, with armed Ottawa police officers shadowing the unarmed sentries. At 9 a.m., two soldiers from the  2nd Canadian Division in Québec — Cpl. Gaël Danguy-Pichette and Pte. Nicolas Zuluaga-Vaillancourt — were posted to stand guard. Members of the Canadian Armed Forces will perform sentry duty from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from April 9 to Nov. 10. The two officers and a police vehicle were working the same shifts as the ceremonial guards.

With just over two weeks to moving day, hundreds of Royal Victoria Hospital employees say they don’t know what jobs they will be doing at the new superhospital. The hospital is not prepared, said Mary Ann Davis, secretary general of the McGill University Hospital Centre Employees’ Union, representing 4,800 staff at the MUHC. “And it’s totally unnecessary.” While no move is easy, she said, such “chaos” so close to moving time is causing staff additional stress and turning lives upside down. The $1.3-billion superhospital on the Glen site in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce is to open on April 26. Under a tightly run schedule starting at 7 a.m., an estimated 200 patients will leave the grounds by ambulance or medicar, one every three minutes — until everyone is transferred and the hospital shuts down at about 5 p.m.

And finally, a former hit man who carried out a murder some would later point to as the first in a bloody conflict that would drag on for years, and came to be known as the biker gang war, is one step closer to freedom. Early in the morning of Oct. 19, 1994, Patrick Call hid while he waited outside the home in Repentigny where his former friend Maurice Lavoie lived. When Lavoie, 32, arrived in his car, with his 22-year-old girlfriend in the passenger seat, Call fired several shots from a pistol into the vehicle before fleeing the scene. Lavoie, who had been struck in the head, died immediately. His girlfriend, injured by three bullets, managed to exit the car and sought help at a neighbour’s home. While no one could have foreseen it at the time, Lavoie’s murder would later be considered by some in the drug trafficking milieu as the first in a conflict between the Hells Angels and a group of criminal organizations who called themselves the Alliance. The conflict came to be commonly referred to as Quebec’s biker gang war. It continued for seven years and more than 160 people, including several innocent victims, were killed.

Stay with us for more on these stories and breaking news as it happens at montrealgazette.com

A longtime member of the Hells Angels who pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit murder saw three years shaved off the sentence he received Wednesday ‎because he is dying of cancer.

Lionel Deschamps, 63, appeared to be a shell of his former self during his court date before Superior Court Justice André Vincent at the Gouin courthouse.

He is very thin and appeared frail as he limped through the courtroom. When he entered his guilty plea, Deschamps spoke with difficulty. But he apparently has not lost his sense of humour. The court date was also used to settle minor ‎matters concerning eight other Hells Angels, who are already serving prison sentences for the same conspiracy but were seeking to get back some of the items police seized when they were arrested in 2009. The eight were in the prisoner’s dock when Deschamps entered the courtroom and they all stood up at the same time. This was due to the obligatory sign of respect all must show when a judge enters a courtroom, which Vincent happened to do at the same time Deschamps was heading for a seat.

The ailing Hells Angel pretended the others had risen in his honour and jokingly motioned with his hands that the gesture was overwhelming him and then he signalled for them to sit down.

Through his guilty plea, Deschamps admitted he was part of the general conspiracy, uncovered in the police investigation Operation SharQc, to murder members of rival criminal organizations between 1994 and 2002. The period is commonly referred to as Quebec’s biker gang war and more than 160 people were killed during the conflict, including several innocent people.

‎In exchange for his guilty plea, the Crown placed a stay of proceeding on a series of first-degree murder charges Deschamps faced.

Prosecutor Robert Rouleau told Vincent on Wednesday that Deschamps merited a 12-year sentence for his role in the conspiracy. That sentence is consistent with others meted out for other men who have pleaded guilty to the conspiracy and who were full-patch members of the Hells Angels, in the province of Quebec, during the biker war.

Deschamps had already served the equivalent of eight years and 11 months when he was granted bail in 2013 because of his failing health.

Rouleau and defence lawyer Alexandre Bergevin agreed to present Vincent with a recommendation that Deschamps be sentenced to time served. After a brief deliberation, Vincent agreed the sentence was fair under the circumstances. The judge referred to a medical report presented to him as evidence on Wednesday and said “the court has also taken note of his physical appearance today.”

Bergevin said Deschamps requires palliative care and requires heavy medication while Rouleau acknowledged the Hells Angel is in no condition to follow a lengthy trial if he decided to go that route.

Twenty-seven alleged members of the Hells Angels and their associates await trials on charges of first-degree murder and the conspiracy charge despite having been arrested, along with Deschamps, in Operation SharQc more than six years ago, in April 2009.

Deschamps joined the Hells Angels’ Montreal chapter sometime in the late 1980s, after five first-degree murder charges he faced were dropped in 1986 due to a lack of evidence. The charges were related to the Lennoxville Purge, an infamous moment in the biker gang’s violent history in Canada when they killed five of their own members on March 24, 1985. At the time, Deschamps was considered a striker in the Hells Angels, a rank below prospective member.

Between 1985 and his arrest in Operation SharQc in 2009, Deschamps avoided being charged with any crimes in Quebec but was clearly active in the biker gang. In 2008, he was listed as the owner of Anges de L’Enfer Montréal, the company that owned the land in Sorel where the gang’s Montreal chapter used to have its bunker before it was destroyed in an arson fire.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

Hells Angel Lionel Deschamps in July 1985.

Hello and welcome to montrealgazette.com and welcome to Midday. Here’s the rundown on some of the stories we’re following for you today.

A man was gunned down in his wheelchair, in front of his daughter, while crossing the street in Terrebonne late Wednesday night. The victim, in his early 50s, was brought to nearby Pierre-le-Gardeur hospital, where he was declared dead, Sûreté du Québec Sgt. Gino Paré said. The man was with his adult daughter around 11:30 p.m. when he crossed Yves-Blais St. and was shot, Paré said. She wasn’t harmed, and is being questioned by police. Police have yet to make an arrest. They are looking for one or more suspects and have been searching for witnesses in nearby buildings.

A large group of about a dozen Hells Angels and their associates, who were arrested in Project SharQc, pleaded guilty Thursday to taking part in a general conspiracy to murder rival gang members between 1994 and 2002. Almost all of the 14 men who appeared at the Gouin courthouse are part of the Trois Rivières chapter. After entering guilty pleas, their cases were broken up into small groups for sentencing. One group will be sentenced in June: Marc Andre Hotte, Steve Rainville, Jean-Francois Bergeron, Bernard Plourde and Gilles Robidoux. Another group will be sentenced in November: Yves (Flag) Gagne, Paul Magnan and Stephane Poitras. Another two, Clermont Carrier and Francois Hinse, will be sentenced in September.

Quebec provincial police and a Crown prosecutor both cautioned Wednesday that murder charges against two lovers in the drug-linked slaying of an Aylmer couple didn’t signal the end of the investigation. Their words quickly proved true. Just hours after Rene Samson-Von Richter, 24, appeared in court to face first-degree murder charges in last year’s killings of Amanda Trottier and boyfriend Travis Votour — the same crimes Samson’s girlfriend had been charged in a day earlier — police announced that a third person had been arrested. The Sûreté du Québec said the third person — a 34-year-old man — was arrested in Gatineau. If also charged, police expect the as-yet-unidentified man will appear in court Thursday.

The number of whistle-blowing complaints about wrongdoing at the city of Montreal nearly tripled in 2014 with the creation of the city’s corruption watchdog, the inspector general. Six of the 308 complaints received through Montreal’s whistle-blowing hotline, which is now managed by inspector general Denis Gallant’s office, were transferred to Quebec’s permanent anti-corruption squad, UPAC, for investigation, Gallant’s first report as inspector generalreveals. Gallant, who entered service in February 2014, is a former Crown prosecutor and was assistant chief prosecutor with the Charbonneau Commission before Mayor Denis Coderre appointed him inspector general last year. Gallant’s annual report was tabled in Montreal city council last week.

And finally, open-air fires either in or close to forests have been banned in certain areas across southern Quebec due to current weather conditions. The ban was put in place on Wednesday by Quebec’s ministry of forest, fauna and parks. Areas from Quebec City to the Outaouais region and everything south of that fall under the ban, including Montreal, Laval and parts of the Eastern Townships. The ban was announced at the same time as a fire ripped through six hectares of forest in Mont St-Grégoire Wednesday. According to the Société de protection des forêts contre le feu (SOPFEU), the fire was started by a resident burning a fire nearby and was controlled by Thursday morning by local firefighters and two air tankers.

 Stay with us for more on these stories and breaking news as it happens at montrealgazette.com

Fourteen Hells Angels, or associates of the gang, have avoided a trial set to begin next week by pleading guilty to taking part in a general conspiracy to murder rival members of criminal organizations over an eight-year period.

With jury selection set to begin Monday, the 14 men — 13 of whom were tied to the gang’s Trois-Rivières chapter — pleaded guilty on Thursday to a murder conspiracy charge while any first-degree murder charges they also faced were placed under a stay of proceedings. The guilty pleas recorded on Thursday brought the number of men who have pleaded guilty in Operation SharQc to 101. Operation SharQc was a lengthy investigation led by the Sûreté du Québec that saw almost every member of the Hells Angels based in Quebec arrested in April 2009.

No one arrested in Operation SharQc has had an actual trial yet, but almost all of the men who pleaded guilty Thursday were supposed to be part of a larger group whose trials are set to begin Monday with jury selection. The large group has now been reduced to 10. Another two men are expected to have a trial in English at a later date, which means only 12 of the 156 people originally charged in 2009 still have cases pending. According to the SQ’s website, another nine men have yet to be arrested in Operation SharQc.

Besides the guilty pleas, the prosecution obtained the court’s permission on Thursday to destroy two of the gang’s bunkers — one in Trois-Rivières and another near Quebec City — which were significant symbols of the biker gang’s defiance, especially between 1994 to 2002, the time frame referred to in the murder conspiracy charge. The men who pleaded guilty on Thursday admitted they were part of a plot the Hells Angels hatched to go after other organized crime figures who opposed their goal to monopolize drug trafficking across the province. Besides being allowed to level the buildings, the provincial government will take ownership of the land the Trois-Rivières chapter once considered its headquarters. Discussions are still underway to determine which level of government will take control of the land near Quebec City.

Included among the group of men who entered guilty pleas on Thursday were at least two who served as presidents of the Trois-Rivières chapter at some point in the past 15 years.

Before announcing the guilty pleas to Superior Court Justice André Vincent, prosecutor Robert Rouleau informed the court that a first-degree murder charge and a conspiracy charge filed against Daniel Beaulieu, 56, a man alleged to be tied to the biker gang’s Quebec City chapter, would be stayed. Beaulieu was arrested in Operation SharQc in April 2009 and was detained for nearly six years until he was granted bail in March this year. On Thursday, Beaulieu walked out of the courtroom knowing the case brought against him was finished.

Jean-Pascal Boucher, a spokesperson for the Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales, said the reasons why Beaulieu’s case was dropped can’t be made public yet because of a publication ban placed on the evidence in the upcoming trial.

“We have our opinion and the Crown has its opinion, but what’s important now is that Mr. Beaulieu is a free man now,” said Nellie Benoît, Beaulieu’s defence lawyer. “It’s time for him to celebrate. It’s all over.”

When asked for his reaction, Beaulieu smiled and motioned toward Benoît.

“I think my lawyer said it all. I am a happy man,” Beaulieu told the Montreal Gazette.

Only four of the men who pleaded guilty on Thursday were sentenced. As part of a joint sentencing recommendation, Alain Biron, 59, a former president of the Trois-Rivières chapter, received an overall sentence of 11 years and four months. With time served factored in, Biron has only one day left to serve, a required formality.

Jean-Damien Perron, 57, received an overall sentence of 12 years and seven months. He was credited 116 months in terms of time already served and was left with a 35-month prison term on Thursday. Daniel Royer, 58, received the same overall sentence as Perron, but has only 24 months left to serve.

All three men were out on bail before they entered their guilty pleas. They had to be frisked in the courtroom by a special constable before they were returned to custody. The frisking prompted some of the nine Hells Angels who were already detained to tease their friends, jokingly suggesting they enjoyed the experience.

Marc-André Hinse, 44, a Hells Angel who was already serving a 10-year prison term he received in 2009, received an overall sentence of 12 years and seven months.

The 10 other men will be sentenced on three separate dates later this year.

pcherry@montrealgazette.com

Here are profiles of nine of the men who pleaded guilty:

Alain (Timote) Biron, 59

Member of the Trois-Rivières chapter since 2004. In 2000, Biron was a member of the Blatnois, a Hells Angels puppet gang, when several of its members were charged in a case that became one of the first tests of Canada’s anti-gang laws.

Biron was arrested in a roundup of Blatnois members, but was only charged with marijuana possession, avoiding the gangsterism charges that many of his fellow gang members would be convicted of.

In June 2004, Biron proudly showed off how he had been promoted to the Hells Angels during a party to celebrate the chapter’s 13th anniversary in Trois-Rivières. Biron stunned police investigators by parading in the street, outside the gang’s bunker, showing off his leather jacket with the Hells Angels infamous death head logo, which only a full-patch member is allowed to wear.

According to a court decision made in a drug trafficking trial held in Newfoundland, Biron was again promoted, by July 2006, to president of the Trois-Rivières chapter.

Clermont (Narf) Carrier, 53

Member of the Hells Angels network since Nov. 19, 1994, when he became a Blatnois member. Carrier has served time for taking part in a murder conspiracy.

On Oct. 17, 1997, he pleaded guilty to his role in a plot to kill a hotel owner and was sentenced to four years in prison. The plot was revealed to police after a hit man for the Hells Angels, Serge Quesnel, provided police with evidence of how the gang planned to kill rivals.

Jean-Damien (Ti-Blanc) Perron, 57

Member of the Trois-Rivières chapter since at least 2002. Perron appeared to be made of Teflon early in his Hells Angels career because very little of the charges filed against him in the 1990s would stick.

In 1996, Perron and eight other men saw a major drug trafficking case, being heard in Montreal, tossed out of court as a side effect of something that happened in a completely different case involving members of the West End Gang. The other case came to be known as the Matticks Affair and involved allegations the Sûreté du Québec had filed falsified evidence in a major drug bust. Four SQ investigators implicated in the Matticks Affair, including one who admitted to perjury, were the main investigators in the case against Perron and the eight others.

On June 12, 1996, with the credibility of the investigators in doubt, the prosecutor in the Perron case asked for a stay of proceedings on the drug trafficking and conspiracy charges all nine men faced and Perron walked.

His luck ran out in June 2002 when he was charged, along with a couple of other Hells Angels, following an SQ investigation into drug trafficking in the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region. He managed to avoid being arrested for five months, but the police found Perron hiding in an apartment on de Maisonneuve Blvd. in Montreal. He pleading guilty to drug trafficking, conspiracy and gangsterism charges the following year and was sentenced to a five-year prison term.

Daniel (Johnny) Royer, 57

Member of the Trois-Rivières chapter since at least 2001. As part of an investigation into the Hells Angels’ now-defunct Nomads chapter in 2000, police uncovered a series of Montreal apartments that were used to store millions in cash the gang made from the sale of drugs. The apartments were also used to keep an accounting system the Nomads chapter used to record their drug deals with other organized crime figures and other Hells Angels chapters.

Police had no trouble linking account No. 116 on the ledger to Royer (the Hells Angels used his nickname as an attempt at a coded reference) and it revealed he had purchased 78 kilograms of cocaine from the Nomads, probably for the Trois-Rivières chapter, during a five-month period in 2000.

On Oct. 17, 2001, just seven months after his arrest, Royer pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and a gangsterism charge. He was sentenced to an eight-year prison term.

Royer would later tell the Parole Board of Canada that he gravitated to the biker gang gradually after he began working in motorcycle repair in 1989.

He was able to leave a penitentiary in February 2007 after reaching his statutory release date. It was clear to authorities that he was still a Hells Angel, but he had not posed a problem while behind bars and even learned a trade, welding. He was returned to a penitentiary 22 months later when he was arrested in Project SharQc and still had roughly six months left on his eight-year sentence.

Jean-Francois (Frank) Bergeron, 53

Member of the Trois-Rivières chapter since at least 1995. Bergeron once sued the Montreal police for nearly $15,000 for making a mistake when they arrested him in 1992 outside the Chez Parée strip bar on Stanley St. The arresting officers had noticed Bergeron and another Hells Angel — both were wearing their gang’s colours — as they stepped outside the bar at closing time.

The other Hells Angel was out on bail and was subject to a curfew while, at that point, Bergeron did not have a criminal record. Confusion set in as Bergeron resisted arrest and the officers assumed he was the one who was violating a court-ordered curfew. The police only realized the error after Bergeron had been detained for nearly three hours. In 1995, Bergeron was awarded $500 for the mistake because a judge determined the police acted in good faith and it appeared Bergeron didn’t correct them when they claimed he was the other Hells Angel.

Bergeron’s claim to having a pristine record came to an end in 1998 when he pleaded guilty to a series of charges related to an RCMP investigation into drug trafficking in Chicoutimi, dubbed Project Carnassier, during which Bergeron sold drugs to an undercover agent a few times. Bergeron served a 16-month prison term in the RCMP case.

He was arrested again, in 2002, as part of a large-scale investigation, led by the Sûreté du Québec, into the Hells Angels’ activities in the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region. The following year, Bergeron pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, conspiracy and gangsterism charges and was sentenced to a 48-month prison term.

Yves (Flag) Gagné, 63

Member of the Trois-Rivières chapter. Gagné’s only significant arrest before Project SharQc came in 1995 after he and two other men were charged with plotting to kill three men who were influential members of the Alliance, a grouping of criminal organizations that opposed the Hells Angels and their monopolistic goals.

The complicated case, which was based partly on evidence from an informant, ended in a stay of proceedings at the Laval courthouse in 1999.

Gagné’s son, Daniel, later joined his father by becoming a member of the biker gang’s chapter in Trois-Rivières. The younger Gagné was also arrested in SharQc, but was released in 2011 after a Superior Court judge placed a stay of proceedings on his case and those of 28 other people who only faced drug trafficking charges.

Marc-André (T-Co) Hinse, 44

Member of the Trois-Rivières chapter. Hinse is the only member of the gang who has been serving a prison sentence almost since the time arrests were first made in Project SharQc in April 2009.

On June 26, 2009, Hinse, the head of the Trois-Rivières chapter at one point, was sentenced to an overall 10-year prison term after he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and gangsterism. With time served factored in, Hinse was left with 81 months left to serve, leaving him lots of time to figure out what to do with the charges he faced in SharQc.

Hinse, who had no criminal record before 2009, had pleaded guilty to charges filed against him in 2004 — part of a Sûreté du Québec investigation dubbed Project Corona — but he had avoided arrest for three years until the police found him hiding in a chalet in La Tuque on Oct. 11, 2007. The police who found Hinse in the chalet were acting on a tip that a different man, sought on drug trafficking charges in a case in Newfoundland, might be hiding there. Hinse had controlled a network that was able to sell 17 kilograms of cocaine in less than a year and was estimated to have raked in more than $1.7 million in profits.

When he finally entered his guilty pleas in 2009, 47 other people arrested in Project Corona had already been convicted.

Steve Rainville, 41

Member of the Trois-Rivières chapter. Rainville was reportedly one of three Hells Angels from Quebec instrumental in setting up a chapter for the gang in Dominican Republic in February 2009, about two months before arrests were made.

He served a 20-month prison sentence for an assault in 1994. He was also arrested in 1997, while he was a member of a Hells Angels puppet gang called the Rowdy Crew, after the Sûreté du Québec pulled over a speeding car on Highway 40, near L’Assomption. Three other men tied to the Hells Angels were in the car with Rainville and a search by police turned up two loaded firearms and 60 grams of hashish. Rainville faced a series of charges following the arrest, but they were stayed a month later after one of the other men confessed the guns and hashish belonged to him.

Gilles Robidoux, 61

Member of the Trois-Rivières chapter since 1995. In 2006, Robidoux pleaded guilty to being part of a large drug trafficking network based in the Saguenay region and insisted that his sentence be served in a federal penitentiary.

The network was run by Richard Roy, the brother of Louis (Melou) Roy, one of the most powerful members of the Hells Angels until he disappeared without a trace in 2000.

When Robidoux entered his guilty pleas — to drug trafficking conspiracy and gangsterism — he was concerned about the notoriously bad conditions often found in overcrowded provincial detention centres and wanted to be sure his sentence would be at least two years, the minimum required for a criminal to be sent to a federal institution. His lawyer at the time told the judge, who ultimately agreed with the sentencing recommendation, that Robidoux would have a better chance of seeing his family if he were inside a federal penitentiary.

Adil Charkaoui has been a household name since 2003 when he was detained by the Canadian government on a security certificate alleging he was a sleeper agent. Charkaoui successfully fought the government and obtained Canadian citizenship — and his freedom — in 2014. But over the past four months, Charkaoui’s name has surfaced again and again as the tie linking 19 young Quebecers who have travelled, or attempted to travel, abroad to conflict zones in the Middle East.

At least 11 of the 19 went to Collège Maisonneuve, where Charkaoui has taught Arabic and Koranic lessons. Some of the youths attended prayer sessions and other activities at the Centre Communautaire Islamique de l’Est de Montréal, or CCIEM, where Charkaoui is president of the board of directors.

But that is where the association ends, Charkaoui insists.

In an interview with the Montreal Gazette on Thursday, Charkaoui addressed the latest allegations against him, and explained why he believes he is the focus of so much negative attention.

Perhaps most surprisingly, however, Charkaoui, who says he knows some of the youths arrested at the airport last month as well as their parents, presents an alternative narrative for why 10 of the youths were travelling abroad. It wasn’t to join ISIS or any other extremist group, he says.

It was for love.

Q: The media and others have pointed to you as the common denominator that ties these youths together. How do you respond to that?

A: When the news first came out that Collège Maisonneuve students were at “Charkaoui’s school,” I was with my lawyers and we were just about to react to a Supreme Court decision that said the government had to divulge its evidence to the defending party — me, who was suing them for $26.5 million. (Charkaoui is seeking compensation for lost income, legal fees, and time spent in detention or under house arrest between 2003 and 2009.)

So the two articles came out at the same time. … Someone called me and gave me the name of the student and I said he was at two sessions (with the school) then he dropped the course. But the journalist still called him a “student of Charkaoui.”

Collège Maisonneuve has said it was not Charkaoui who taught but the École des compagnons. We are 14 teachers teaching the Koran and Arabic at the college but it’s always “Charkaoui the preacher.” I am the director of École des compagnons and I gave lessons, but I’m not the only one. No one ever asked to speak to the other teachers.

Afterward, when the names of other youths came out they were associated directly with CCIEM, and the “centre de Charkaoui.” But I’m not the director. I’m the president of the board of directors. I have no salary there and I’m not there during the day. But every time, they say the “centre de Charkaoui.”

Period.

And people believe it.

Q: Why do you think so many people are focusing on your relationship to these youths?

A: If I hadn’t been arrested under a security certificate would people still say the same thing? What about other teachers at the CCIEM or the CEGEP?

It’s because my name is known.

Now they say “It’s him again.”

That’s why I’m suing the government. I want a formal apology from the federal government and compensation for all those years. I think getting my Canadian citizenship was an admission — it means I’m not a danger to society.

But as long as there is no formal apology and compensation, like with Maher Arar, people can associate my name to anything.

I’d like to also bring in the debate over the charter of values, in which I was very involved (as head of the Collectif québécois contre l’Islamophobie). People never forgave me.

The day after the election, the CCIEM was attacked with a Molotov cocktail and an axe, and it was tagged with “f–k Liberals, kill Muslims.”

The debate put so much pressure on society and created a certain hate for Muslims and people saw me as Public Enemy No. 1.

Q: You knew some of the 10 youths arrested at the airport. What can you tell me about them?

A: We heard that 10 youths were arrested and we were in total shock.

They were not talking of one or two, but 10 trying to reach a conflict zone, probably to join a terrorist group.

Then we investigated. I talked to three parents, including the father who alerted police.

And we learned that it’s five couples — five love stories — and the parents are against their marriage.

One was an Algerian with a Moroccan, another from a Lebanese Shiite family who wants to marry someone from a Moroccan Sunni family.

But none of this was said.

When we started to look at this, we realized the media is playing Conservative politics. Prime Minister Harper comes to Dorval airport and says: “There’s no place for jihadis in Canada. …”

The father didn’t call the police because his son was going to engage in jihad, but because he was leaving without his permission.

So it’s five attempted marriages.

(Editor’s note: The father of one of the minors told La Presse and the Toronto Star that his daughter was leaving for Italy to get married — but that Charkaoui had radicalized her and filled her with hate.

On May 19, the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, made up of the RCMP and Montreal police, released a statement in which it said the 10 youths were arrested at Trudeau airport, and “suspected of wanting to leave the country to join jihadist groups.” They had their passports confiscated but no charges were laid. The RCMP would not comment Thursday on Charkaoui’s explanation.)

Q: That’s hard to believe. They were all going to get married?

A: I’m telling you what the parents told me.

They are minors.

We are not naive. …

We asked the parents and they say they were going to get married and come back and they were registered for (school) next year. They deny categorically that they were going to a conflict zone.

Q: Anonymous sources, cited by La Presse, assert that someone or several people at the CCIEM had been advising youths on how to get to Syria and Iraq. Could this be true?

A: It’s anonymous. “Sources.” We’re scandalized by this and we thought to ourselves, if it did happen, was it entrapment? Did people from CSIS or elsewhere come to the centre and brainwash (the youths)? We’ve sent messages to youths to say if people come to you with radical speeches you have to alert the police.

Everyone starts doubting everyone else. It’s a terrible atmosphere.

There are about 1,000 people a week at the centre attending prayers, courses and activities.

There’s no registration — no one will ask you who you are or tell you to wear a veil.

In the classes I give I don’t know who the students are. I don’t take attendance. I can know faces but I don’t know all the people there — that’s how it works in mosques and other centres.

Will we need to change that? Are we going to start carding people in mosques and synagogues and go back to a dark part of our history?

Also, there’s no mixing at the CCIEM. There’s a separation between girls and boys. So how do they know each other? They didn’t meet at CCIEM. They got to know each other in CEGEP. That doesn’t come out in the news either.

Q: You have taught at Collège Maisonneuve. What do you think explains the fact that so many of the youths in question were attending the CEGEP?

A: Collège Maisonneuve is one of the biggest CEGEPs in east-end Montreal along with Rosemont.

Both are close to the CCIEM. Normally, I give karate and kick-boxing classes at Collège Rosemont. This year they said they already had a different school there. So it’s our first year at Collège Maisonneuve. If it weren’t for this coincidence it would have changed everything. We are still giving classes every Sunday because the CEGEP knows we did nothing wrong.

Q: Why do you think some youths are drawn to ISIS or other groups abroad?

A: Nothing creates as much controversy in the Muslim community as ISIS — even the other groups in Syria don’t relate to ISIS. I don’t know why ISIS is presented by the media as the destination for youths.

It’s as if you said in Canada (in terms of gangs) there are just the Hells Angels, so you send a message to those wanting to become criminals that it’s the Hells — it’s dangerous.

People are curious and they want information and youths have access to Internet and the Islamic State has really developed its media.

They have their own newspapers in other languages and they have a powerful media presence to show people living happily, and with certain values.

So to counter this you have to use another discourse.

You can’t fight speech with bombs — you can’t conquer an idea with repression.

It’s hard to understand. We are not confronted every day by these problems. We deal more with kids dropping out, or street gangs, or bullying. It’s not every day we’ll get a parent saying “my son wants to go to jihad in Iraq.”

We can’t deal with this ­­­question in a partisan manner. Journalists say Charkaoui you are an imam. You criticize Israel, the government. But I don’t think youths will listen to a yes man. We need imams who are independent and won’t deny injustice. If we say the world is all roses and there is no discrimination or injustice youths will say you’re a sellout. We have to give alternatives to violence and preach by example. The message we send with bombs is that violence is a solution to conflict. No.

Q: You were a controversial figure for many years as you fought the security certificate all the way to the Supreme Court. Is this a déjà vu?

A: It’s worse.

It hasn’t stopped since February. It’s been an intense campaign of denigration. Every time I leave the house, there are several cars from media organizations. They follow me with my children. There are highs and lows, but it seems every time they try to re-launch the campaign and associate my name with all kinds of allegations. Before, it was the security certificate and secret allegations. But now it’s clear, it’s smearing and lies linking me to youths where there is no link.

I did know some of the kids. I don’t deny it.

But it’s not because you know someone (that you’re guilty of something.) I taught kids in high school who may have committed crimes like robbery or speeding, but is that my fault?

Some journalists have asked me what my plan is to fight radicalization. (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper doesn’t have a plan yet. (Mayor Denis) Coderre doesn’t either. But I’m supposed to have a plan. I’m a volunteer at the centre. But this gives ammunition to those who want law and order to be the main election theme and makes the Muslim community into the stereotype of the mean terrorist.

I’ve also received several threats this year. Just yesterday I got a threatening letter, and I got a call from the Integrated Security Enforcement Team, saying that my life was at risk, that someone with firearms said online that he was going to attack me personally.

csolyom@montrealgazette.com