Byron Sonne On Trial

Anarchist occupiers are agitating governments and citizenry all over North America, including Toronto, the site of Byron Sonne’s trial this week. I sincerely doubt that the Occupy Wall Street hippies are going to help Byron Sonne make his case that he wasn’t really amassing large quantities of TATP explosives to use in an attempt to detonate a bomb during the runup to the G20 in 2010. But he certainly stands in solidarity with anarchists and agitators.

So the trial opened with Sonne’s defense team claiming that his rights were violated when he was photographing police barricades and disclosing security operations of the G20 infrastructure. From CBC news here:

The trial of a man charged with possessing explosives in the lead up to the G20 economic summit in Toronto began on Monday, with lawyers arguing his charter rights were violated when police detained him and searched his property.

Sonne faces one charge of possession of materials used to make explosives and another charge of counselling to commit mischief.

Police have alleged that Sonne, an independent internet security expert, planned to detonate a homemade explosive device in downtown Toronto while leaders were in town for the G20 summit.

Supporters of Sonne have said he was just trying to test how far police would infringe on civil liberties in the name of security. Sonne spent 11 months in jail on G20-related charges after being arrested last June.

Sonne claims his rights were first violated when police stopped him in June 2010 while he was taking pictures downtown Toronto of the security fence being erected. Police later obtained a search warrant based on information gleaned from Twitter and Flickr accounts linked to Sonne.

But Sonne claims that the information police used to get the warrant was misleading and “contained a number of falsehoods and inaccuracies, engaged in speculation and relied on information of dubious reliability.”

What the article fails to say is that the cops did find materials to assemble explosives in Sonne’s house- well, actually it was his ex-wife’s house; the house purchased for Sonne and Kristen Petersen by Petersen’s Dad.

Sonne didn’t work for a living, much like everyone else in the OWS and similar anarchist movements. Sure he claims he’s an Internet Security Expert, but experts have professional experience they can point to, and Sonne can’t put together a resume that would get him hired anywhere as an expert. His year in jail certainly doesn’t help that either, and his ISC2 certification has been suspended pending the outcome of the trial.

If he fails to prove that the cops violated his rights during the search and seizure of the explosives materials, it will be interesting to see what his lawyers come up with as a “plan B.”