MONTREAL — Chris Carbert and Anthony Olienick, participants in the trucker-organized 2022 Freedom Convoy against Ottawa’s job-threatening COVID vaccine mandates, were acquitted by a jury Aug. 2 of frame-up charges of “conspiring” to kill police. The courthouse in Lethbridge, Alberta, was packed with their supporters.
The acquittal could have an impact on the ongoing joint trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, leaders of the convoy who face multiple charges, including “conspiracy.” They are not being charged with doing anything, but for statements they made during the protest.
Carbert and Olienick and hundreds of other truckers had closed down the U.S. border crossing in Coutts, Alberta, for two weeks in solidarity with the three-week camp-in of truckers and supporters in downtown Ottawa in 2022.
The Ottawa protest ended after the government invoked the draconian Emergencies Act and sent 3,000 cops against the truckers, arresting 200 and laying 393 criminal charges against 121 participants. Ottawa has pushed ahead with trials of those arrested despite a Federal Court ruling in January this year that its use of the Emergencies Act was unconstitutional and illegal.
The jury’s acquittal of Carbert and Olienick on the main charge against them is a blow to Ottawa’s campaign to teach the truckers a lesson for daring to demand change to government policy.
Ottawa’s anti-worker campaign against leaders and participants in the Freedom Convoy has included a media campaign smearing the truckers as Nazi-oriented, racist, violent right wingers; a plethora of frame-up charges against participants; extraordinarily severe bail restrictions designed to silence them; and pretrial “detention” for months, in some cases years, without being convicted of any crime.
Coutts frame-up unravels
The frame-up began when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police claimed they found a cache of weapons, ammunition and body armor near the blockade. In addition to Carbert and Olienick, the government arrested two other Freedom Convoy participants, Christopher Lysak and Jerry Morin. Charges against Lysak and Morin were dropped after they pled guilty to lesser charges. Both had been in pretrial detention for three and a half years! They were sentenced to time served.
Much of the “evidence” put forward by the prosecution was based on text messages and testimony from at least three undercover RCMP officers who posed as supporters of the convoy.
“The undercover officers freely admitted that they are trained to lie,” Carbert’s lawyer told the court, “and I submit that it was painfully obvious during the course of the trial.”
In testimony, the cops said they suspected that Carbert and Olienick were going to receive a secret late-night shipment of guns. But a courier told the court the package he delivered was socks, underwear and a guitar.
The jurors saw through the government’s “conspiracy” frame-up. However, they did convict the two on lesser charges of mischief and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. Olienick was also convicted of possessing a pipe bomb found in his home. The court will address these convictions Aug. 12.