(Canadian Press) Forcing a reporter to give information on a terror suspect to the RCMP would be unreasonable given that the wanted Canadian man is almost certainly dead, an Ontario justice heard on Tuesday.
The argument from Vice Media played out in Superior Court despite a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in November that journalist Ben Makuch must turn over logs of chats he had with Farah Shirdon, formerly of Calgary.
At issue in the hearing was the reliability of statements from U.S. Central Command — known as Centcom — issued in 2017 and 2018. Those statements, first reported in the media, stated Shirdon had been killed in an air strike in Mosul, Iraq, in July 2015.
Despite the statements, crown lawyer Brian Puddington argued there was no proof Shirdon was killed. He noted the U.S. State Department still designates Shirdon as “actively engaged in terrorism.”
