Pubdate: Sat, 24 Apr 2004
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2004 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Irwin Block, The Gazette
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

SUIT AGAINST RCMP INCREASED TO $47.4 MILLION

Man Spent Eight Years in Thai Prison. Recovered Drug Addict Claims Mounties 
Forced Him into Heroin Plot Overseas

A Montreal man who claims he was entrapped in a botched RCMP sting 
operation to buy drugs in Thailand has boosted his damage suit to $47.4 
million.

Lawyers for Alain Olivier yesterday amended their original claim against 
the attorney-general of Canada and undercover members of the RCMP after 
examining 7,000 documents and questioning six RCMP officers.

Lawyers Reevin Pearl and Francois Audet said the documents show senior RCMP 
officers who approved the undercover operation that lured Olivier into help 
buy heroin in Thailand from July 1987 to February 1989 showed no concern 
they were putting him in danger of a death sentence if he were arrested.

The documents also indicate the RCMP confused Oliver, 44, a recovered 
heroin user who had no criminal record before the Thailand trip, with his 
twin brother, Serge, who had an extensive record.

Olivier returned to Canada after eight years sleeping on a concrete floor 
and in chains in a Bangkok jail. The operation, code-named Deception, took 
a tragic turn when undercover RCMP Cpl. Derek Flanagan died during an 
aborted drug buy in Chiang Mai. Olivier was subsequently arrested and jailed.

He received a death sentence that was commuted by royal pardon to life 
imprisonment on a plea bargain, before being returned here under a prisoner 
exchange treaty in July 1997.

He was released on parole in 1998.

The documents and statements in discovery indicate "a wilful and 
intentional breach of fundamental human rights," Pearl charged.

In the deposition of former chief superintendent Frank Palmer, at the time 
one of the senior Mounties in Vancouver who approved the operation, Palmer 
was asked:

"It didn't bother you about bringing a Canadian citizen to be arrested in 
Thailand for a crime you knew carried the death penalty. That didn't bother 
you at all?"

"No," was the reply. Palmer retired in 1997 with the rank of deputy 
commissioner.

The suit charged Palmer "knew or should have known promising someone a half 
kilo of heroin with a street value of approximately $3 million is illegal 
and constitutes entrapment under Canadian law as well as being forbidden by 
the manual of operations of the RCMP."

The suit also alleges undercover agents repeatedly threatened to kill 
Olivier unless he co-operated in setting up the Thai drug deal.

Pearl said he hopes the case will be heard in court in six to 12 months.
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