A pro-Palestinian protester charged with assault after a standoff at a University of 海角社区官网encampment has had his charge withdrawn 11 months later.
The Crown dropped the charge against Hesham Aly .
The sudden withdrawal came nearly a year after charges were first laid, Aly was not the aggressor and almost 10 months after a Superior Court judge found Aly was the one trying to de-escalate the situation, calling the original claims “misleading.”
“I find the whole situation frustrating,” Aly told the Star in an interview. “I believe that the charges weren’t about justice but about silencing dissent and discrediting the encampments.”
The Star reported days after the charge was first laid that a video provided by a protester showed a much different interaction than the report filed by university security.
In the video, Aly is seen standing with his hands in his pockets in front of the fenced-in encampment in support of Palestine, as an older man on a bicycle takes video on his phone, challenging Aly and the protesters about wanting to play football on the campus鈥 occupied grassy area.
鈥淎ll your faces are going on artificial intelligence,鈥 the man can be heard saying. 鈥淒o you have anything else to say before you take this to another level?鈥
The helmeted man then tells Aly to 鈥済et out of the way鈥 before putting his free arm around Aly and attempting to pull the fence from behind him. Aly then pushes the man away as others move in to intervene. Aly is then seen trying to pull those supporters back.
In July, Superior Court Justice Markus Koehnen made a ruling on an injunction request by the university to end the ongoing encampment.
In it, the judge details several safety complaints by the university, including the incident involving Aly. He describes what the university claimed was a father and son trying to use the area to play football who were assaulted by a protester.
鈥淏ystander video footage demonstrates that this description is inaccurate and misleading,鈥 Koehnen wrote, describing what happened in the video published by the Star.
鈥淥n my view of the video, the father was being excluded from Front Campus but it was the father who became physically aggressive and the Marshall who ensured that the situation did not escalate.鈥
Aly, speaking to the Star, said he’s disappointed that campus security, 海角社区官网Police and the Crown did not investigate what really happened even after video evidence contradicted the initial report that led to his arrest. He said it’s also disheartening to see so many public resources expended to pursue these types of cases, what he said are efforts to dehumanize and criminalize pro-Palestinian voices.聽
“The process is the punishment,” he said, explaining that police publicizing these arrests is scary, humiliating and can result in serious consequences for those charged.
As for the incident itself, Aly said in the minutes before the video begins he was trying to show the man and his son other fields they could play in, pointing out the encampment area was full of tents, but the man insisted he wanted to be let in.
“I knew that this wasn’t about me,” Aly said.
Aly鈥檚 lawyer told the court he hopes similar matters are dealt with more quickly.
Shane Martinez told the judge they were frustrated by the lack of action in Aly鈥檚 case with a serious charge hanging over his head despite contradictory evidence. He said it took them threatening to go to trial on the charge for the Crown to back down.
鈥淚t feels as though we鈥檙e yelling into a void trying to draw attention to these things,鈥 Martinez said in court (The Star requested an official audio recording of the appearance).
Ontario Court Justice Feroza Bhabha said she agreed with Martinez that the wheels of justice needed to move faster.
鈥淚鈥檓 with you on that,鈥 she responded after Martinez鈥檚 comments in court.
鈥淭hese decisions need to be made sooner rather than later.鈥
Earlier this month, the last of 11 people charged in an incident that saw a downtown Indigo store defaced with posters and red paint were discharged without criminal records 鈥 17 months after the alleged vandalism took place.
None of the so-called “Indigo 11” were convicted on the charges against them, with the majority having the charges dropped entirely.
