“It’s like the leader of the hate mongers in the world and you suggest a three month sentence!” Judge Manlio Del Negro could not believe on Wednesday that the Crown could ask for a very lenient three-month prison sentence for an influential neo-Nazi guilty of fomenting hatred against Jews.
The crimes committed by Gabriel Sohier-Chaput are “extremely serious”. Under the pseudonym of Zeiger, the 36-year-old Quebecer was in the 2010s the most prolific author of the very influential neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer, a “horrible” neo-Nazi and white supremacist publication, according to the judge. In a hateful text at the heart of the trial, he urged his readers to “take action” against Jews.
When the Crown prosecutor, Mr.e Patrick Lafrenière, suggested imposing a three-month prison sentence on Wednesday at the Montreal courthouse, Judge Del Negro was stunned. He then listed for ten minutes more severe sentences imposed across the country in similar cases. The prosecutor then barely responded to the judge’s concerns.
Surprisingly, defense attorney M.e Antonio Cabral rallied to the suggestion of the Crown, when he wanted to claim six months in prison at home. As both parties now support the proposal, it is a “joint suggestion”. Under the case law, the judge can hardly reject it.
“What you are suggesting seems to me to be at the lowest level of the applicable ranges for someone who has committed an extremely serious crime with regard to Canadian and Quebec values, with regard to society. In the present context, where hatred is omnipresent throughout the world, and is spreading like a virus. And you, the two lawyers, believe that a three-month prison sentence is sufficient to achieve the penological objectives in this case? “Launched Judge Del Negro, who was “highly concerned” by this suggestion.
The judge argued that Gabriel Sohier-Chaput’s pre-sentence report was “extremely negative”. “He tried to justify his actions. He still adheres to the ideas he had in 2017, ”insisted the magistrate.
Before the court, Gabriel Sohier-Chaput described himself as a “changed person”. “I’m a different person now,” he said. He said he regretted causing “sadness and negative emotions” in some people. “It was not my intention,” he said. “Opportunistic” excuses, according to the judge.
“I was very political at the time. These days, I’m focusing on my career and my life. I am no longer involved in anything. It is no longer something that interests me, ”assured Gabriel Sohier-Chaput.
The neo-Nazi thinker was a leading figure in America’s far-right movement in the 2010s. In his hateful text, he wrote that 2017 would be “the year of action”. He then spoke of the Jews and advocated “Nazism, everywhere, [non-stop nazism] until our streets are flooded with the tears of our enemies”.
“The message is provocative and inciting, aiming to desensitize readers to the use of violence. The message conveyed is the promotion of Nazism and its ideology, namely the persecution and extermination of the Jews. It encourages the reader to consider the Jews as their enemies and, consequently, to dislike and want to hate them,” the judge concluded last January, finding him guilty.
The judge will render his judgment next September.