(Montreal) Gabriel Sohier Chaput, a 36-year-old Montrealer convicted of willfully fomenting hatred against Jews, is asking permission to appeal the verdict.
In an application for leave to appeal filed last week, his attorney writes that the trial judge created an appearance of bias in the courtroom.
Sohier Chaput was found guilty on January 23 of incitement to hatred, in the Court of Quebec, in connection with an article published in 2017 on the neo-Nazi website “Daily Stormer”. He had written more than 800 texts for this website, making him one of its most prolific collaborators.
The trial was marked by debates between the prosecution and the defense over what facts the court could readily admit into evidence regarding the Holocaust and Nazi ideology, and what should be established by an expert witness.
Counsel for the accused also submits in his motion that Judge Manlio Del Negro erred in fact and in law in his analysis of the credibility of the accused as a witness, when he compared him to Machiavelli and that he implied that he had rallied his readers to the virus of hate without citing any concrete evidence.
Me Antonio Cabral asks the Court of Appeal to set aside the guilty verdict or order a new trial.