Singleton has also suggested that the FBI and CIA, still concerned about his belief that they were involved in the Kennedy assassination, were “delighted to induce Canadian elements to reactivate old charges … and finally set up an extradition.”15 The Canadian authorities, he says, acted out of “an embattled, insecure nationalism that could brand an American as a sort of Captain Alfred Dreyfus.” He adds, “No one figured Singleton being his own Zola in his Dreyfus case.”16 Singleton also believes that U.S. and Canadian authorities do not understand, and are attempting to misapply, basic notions of extradition law, and says he is not willing to be a party to “anything goes” law.17
Singleton’s extradition hearing was held on December 20, 2004, before Magistrate Donald Bostwick of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas. He appeared before Magistrate Bostwick in an orange jumpsuit and wearing leg shackles. For reasons that are not clear, Singleton dropped his earlier application for bail. At the hearing he argued that the request for extradition did not give an adequate statement of the facts of the case or provide the text of relevant Canadian laws to support extradition. He argued that there should be no extradition because the offence for which extradition was being sought was of a political character. He argued that there was severe misconduct by the prosecution when it presented certain inappropriate materials to the court, particularly “inflammatory” press clippings from Canadian newspapers that were part of a “press campaign” against him (these materials were withdrawn by the Government of Canada and did not form part of the record of the case). On February 25, 2005, Magistrate Bostwick rejected all of these arguments. Singleton was ordered to be held without bail, pending his surrender to Canada.
Singleton did not give up. He appealed Magistrate Bostwick’s decision, delaying his release to Canadian authorities. He continued to deny that he was subject to extradition, and sought release from custody, filing a petition of habeas corpus. There was a flurry of further supplemental filings by Singleton in the summer, autumn, and early winter of 2005, amending and reamending his habeas corpus petition and related filings, and making elaborate and emotional attacks on Magistrate Bostwick’s judgment. In one of these filings, Singleton accuses Bostwick of “palpable errors” and refers to the “Defendant’s annihilative, obliterative, total rebuttal of the naked conclusory charges in Canada’s affidavits.”
On September 16, 2005, Singleton was moved to the Leavenworth Detention Center, a maximum security prison, where a prisoner does “hard time”; the cells are very small, the mattresses are very thin, the food is bland, and there are lots of rules. When he first got to Leavenworth, there was a confrontation with guards, and he was put in solitary confinement (known as “the hole’) for two weeks. Singleton told me that he liked “the hole”: He was by himself and could concentrate on his studying and writing. Now he shares a cell with three other prisoners. He spends a lot of time playing cards and chess with other inmates. Singleton is allowed visitors for two hours every Friday evening, and one international call a week for fifteen minutes. He can’t have much correspondence, because stamps are in short supply. He says the food is better at Leavenworth than at Sedgewick, and there is a better law library. He can get vitamins (they were not available at Sedgewick). He can trade chocolate bars for oranges, which makes him happy. Singleton has lost twenty pounds since being transferred to Leavenworth. Other inmates call him “the very old man.” He says that he expects to live another twenty-five years.
At the end of 2006, Marvin Singleton’s habeas corpus application was still pending (early in 2006 Singleton seemed willing to withdraw his application, waive extradition, and consent to be transferred to Canada, but subject to conditions that were not acceptable to the U.S. Department of Justice). He spends his time in prison working on his legal arguments, writing “prison poems” (in which, he says, he puts “quite a bit of stock”), and working on his literary western. (A source of annoyance is that he is not allowed a laptop computer.) Jim Cross, public affairs officer for United States Attorney Eric Melgren, District of Kansas, said, “Mr. Singleton has explored every legal means to stay where he’s at.”18 When asked why he had done so, particularly since the general view is that Canadian justice and jails are more agreeable than those in the United States, Mr. Cross said, “Everything about Mr. Singleton is a mystery.” Some simply suggest that his judgment is impaired, and that he needs psychiatric help. Others say that he does not want to be dragged back to Nelson for trial, allowing local friends and acquaintances to judge his guilt or innocence for themselves. One person wrote to me, “His fantasy that he is being persecuted for crimes he did not commit is fragile, and if confronted by actual evidence he would have to account to himself for what he has done. Perhaps he prefers to live in his fantasy.” Someone else said that Singleton wants to come back to Nelson as a free man, not dragged back in shackles. Part of the explanation may be his simple bloody-mindedness. He wrote to me, “My problem is: I can’t ‘let go of the tiger’s tail.’”19
Singleton has written, “Everyone assumed that extradition is a facile power-politics ritual, grinding down defendants from a grouping unable to cope with U.S. hard-time jail conditions and supposedly passive in the face of defence-counsel collusion in massive prosecutorial and judicial misconduct.”20 He continues:
I did not want to slide along with a bad extradition a politicized fiddle … and because the Justice Dept. relies on “white-collar” types simply being unable to hack jail conditions, jail conditions they are responsible for generally. In a larger sense, as a child of the 20th century, it is my turn to be the individual caught up in being a “d.p.”/political pawn whipsawed by 2 sovereign states which feed on little human victims of crude, bullying/“stereotyping.”… [I] want to show the two “States” that an individual can put up a fight.
And then, on a different tack:
I have come upon the truth that a Law/Humanities Authority must recognize the importance of Injustice as a key dimension of Law/Humanities wisdom-of-value. I believe “Injustice” can only be understood by persons incarcerated for not less than a year under dubious, politically-influenced charges. Thus my prison experiences, and reflections thereupon, were the required “Post-Doctoral” regime I had to personally experience.
I decided to go to Leavenworth and see him. I wrote, saying that I wanted to come and visit. Singleton seemed reluctant. He wrote back that at any moment his habeas corpus application might be successful, and he would be gone from prison; I risked a futile trip. Anyway, he said, he could give written answers to any questions that I asked in writing: Wouldn’t that be better? I persisted. He put me on his visitors’ list. His case manager sent me the visitation rules; in particular, I should not wear orange clothing that might make guards, in an emergency, confuse me with an inmate. The only time Singleton could be seen was six-forty-five on a Friday night. One Friday, in January 2006, I got on a flight to Kansas City. When I got there, I rented a car and drove west, out of Missouri, into the farm country of Kansas, on my way to Leavenworth.
The Leavenworth Detention Center is surrounded by two high razor wire fences. Each has a remote-controlled gate that opens once you have been studied and approved on closed-circuit television. The second gate will open only when the first is closed, which means that for a time, coming or going, the visitor is caught in a kind of no-man’s land between razor wire. Once inside the building, you must produce identification and register. No “personal property” is allowed—that includes books. No “contraband” is permitted—that includes obvious items like guns and drugs, and puzzling things like photographs. You wait in a waiting room for your name to be called. I was the only white person there. Most of the waiting visitors were black women with small children, presumably going to visit partners and fathers inside. While I waited, an old white man went past, going (he said) to teach “creation science” to a group of inmates. There are about eight hundred prisoners in the Leavenworth Detention Center. I discovered later that, as I waited
in the prison, Vice-President Cheney was across the road at Fort Leavenworth, a U.S. Army installation, pinning medals on soldiers.21
After a long wait, a guard shouted, “Visitor for Singleton!” I went through a metal detector into a room lined on three sides with thick windows, with a telephone and a chair in front of each window. Behind each window was an inmate. In front of the window were the inmate’s visitors. On the fourth side of the room was a guard who watched everyone. The room was full of the noise of shouted one-sided conversations and crying children. Behind one of the windows was an old, white man. It was Marvin Singleton, once a member of the Law Society of British Columbia, wearing orange clothing, waiting for me.
We talked for an hour over the telephone. He told me his story, much as I have told it. I asked what it’s like for an old white one-time lawyer to be in a place like this. “If you have certain social skills, you can get along,” he said. What about violence? “I’ve had to threaten to mix it up a couple of times,” he said, “just to make a point.” He seemed good-humoured about prison, and cheerful. The guards are like hotel clerks, he said. I wonder, Does he like living in Leavenworth? Does he relish his predicament, which marks him as a rebel who fights the establishment on points of principle? He said he finds being in prison “irksome.” He said that he resents looking out of the window and seeing razor wire.
I asked him if he’s made a serious miscalculation. He’d been fighting extradition for almost eighteen months. He may well lose, and be taken back to Canada in chains, having spent a long time in a harsh U.S. prison for nothing. He admitted that could happen. Meanwhile, he polishes his legal arguments and works on his prison poems.
Visiting time is over. The guard tells us all to leave. I say goodbye to Marvin Singleton. As I go, I see his slightly smiling face behind the thick glass. He waves. I wave back.
Later Singleton wrote to me, “Your visit earlier in the month is very much appreciated. Speaking with you opened up my ‘siege mentality’ and helped me think more realistically.”22 But it would not be long before he decided that I should be added to the list of those who had done him wrong. In May 2006, I published an account of my visit to Leavenworth in the magazine Canadian Lawyer.23 It brought forth a long letter of outrage from Singleton.24 “[I]t was likely you would represent me in the Canadian trial,” he wrote. “This led me to discuss freely with you matters I did not want publicized.” He accused me, among other things, of breaching solicitor-client privilege, elaborately sustaining a deceit, baiting him into correspondence, and violating the ethics of literary journalism. I replied:25
There was never any suggestion by me that I was prepared or able to represent you.… What someone tells a writer and journalist who is interviewing him may obviously end up in print.…
I am sorry you feel the way you do. I enjoyed meeting you, and all along have felt sympathy for your plight: I thought that might have been evident from my magazine piece. I wish you the best, but must say that this correspondence is now finished.
FOURTEEN
GUERRILLA FIGHTERS
Eric Belhassen and Christina Finney
Awoman fell in love with a con man. He moved in, and they got married. When the woman discovered the truth about her new husband, she threw him out and sought legal recourse. She and the lawyer representing her estranged husband became bitter enemies. Long after the con man disappeared into an Egyptian prison, the woman and the lawyer waged an intense battle that seemed to last forever. The struggle eventually became one between the woman and the Quebec Bar Association which, she said, was negligent in responding to her complaints about the lawyer. Many years later, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed. In the end, the story is not so much about two men who behaved badly, as about how poorly the legal profession can be governed, and how one person who feels the victim of injustice can be ferocious in response.
CHRISTINA FINNEY met Samir Badr in 1986.1 Christina was fifty-one years old and recently divorced. She lived in Lachine, Quebec, and taught music at St. Thomas High School in Pointe Claire. Samir was a fat, bald Egyptian, sometimes described as “charismatic,” who claimed to be a businessman and a scientist. In a July 17, 1994, feature article in Montreal’s Gazette, reporter Susan Semenak described what happened shortly after Christina and Samir met: “He would call her 10 times a day. When she saw him, he’d play love songs on the stereo and they would talk for hours. He told her she was the smartest, the most beautiful woman in the world, and it wasn’t long before they were lovers.”2 Samir moved into Christina’s house in Lachine, a two-storey stone cottage full of antiques. They married soon afterward.
Samir persuaded Christina to buy two rental properties with him, a fourplex in Pointe Claire and a duplex in Lachine (Christina was interested in real estate, and already owned several buildings). Samir and Christina both contributed to the modest down payments on these properties, but somehow only Samir’s name appeared on the titles. Without telling Christina, Samir quickly remortgaged the fourplex and duplex. He pocketed the mortgage proceeds, and put the properties up for sale.
Samir Badr had a lawyer friend called Eric Belhassen. In May 1990, Jasson Finney, Christina’s son, was involved in a contract dispute involving his music band, and needed legal advice.3 Samir told Christina that Belhassen could help Jasson. She gave Belhassen a $2,000 advance on his fees. Soon, both Jasson and his mother were dissatisfied with Belhassen’s work, and asked for their money back. Jasson complained to the Quebec Bar Association about the $2,000 advance. Christina complained separately, and was told by bar officials that Belhassen was a lawyer in good standing and that she should settle with him. Belhassen’s response to her complaints was to sue her for $6,800, which he claimed she owed him for work relating to her real estate investments. (Four years later, a court dismissed this claim.) Belhassen, described by some as a “madman,” had chosen a formidable opponent. Christina Finney was tough, vindictive, energetic, and emotional. She never—ever—gave up.
In 1990, Christina split up with Samir Badr. She had discovered that he kept an apartment in Pointe Claire where he saw other women. She had found out that he already had a wife, and six children, in Plattsburgh, just across the Quebec–New York border. She had discovered that he had a criminal record, in both Canada and the United States. Christina went to see a lawyer, Robert Francis. Francis sent Badr a letter demanding that Badr hand over Christina’s share of the Lachine and Pointe Claire properties. Francis had the properties seized so that they could not be sold until the dispute was resolved.
Badr reacted angrily. Susan Semenak reported in The Gazette that he “sent a bailiff with a restraining order to [Christina’s] door, alleging that she had hit him in the head, spit in his eye and broken his finger.”4 He filed several civil suits against Christina seeking damages. One claimed that she had tried to burn down the Pointe Claire fourplex. Others asserted that she owed him money for construction work he had done on her properties. As part of the general onslaught, Samir Badr’s lawyer, Eric Belhassen, initiated bankruptcy proceedings against Christina’s lawyer, Robert Francis (the petition in bankruptcy was later withdrawn).
In 1992, the Quebec Superior Court resolved the dispute over the fourplex and duplex in Christina Finney’s favour, awarding her $179,000. A gas station owned by Badr was sold in a sheriff’s auction so that Finney could be paid. Eric Belhassen saw a notice of this sale posted in the courthouse. He contested the distribution of the sale proceeds. He claimed that Badr owed him $62,500 for legal services that had not yet been billed. Finney was paid only $112,000, with the balance being frozen until Belhassen’s claim could be resolved. The bitter feelings between Christina Finney and Eric Belhassen increased. Belhassen alleged that in October 1993, Finney approached him outside a courtroom and threatened to kill him. In August 1994, she was acquitted of these charges. In November 1993, Finney’s new lawyer, Joan Benson, was threatened by Belhassen when they bumped into each other outside Montreal’s Alexis Nihon Plaza. Belhassen told Benson, “You k
now, if I were you, I wouldn’t be involved. You’ve got five children and why would you want to be involved in something like that … with me?”5 Frightened, Benson withdrew from the file.
Samir Badr spent eight months of 1992 in a New York State prison, for defrauding the Clinton County welfare system of $20,000. In February 1993, he tried to cross the Canada–United States border at Derby Line, Vermont, but was arrested as an illegal immigrant and sent to Montreal’s Parthenais jail. There he stayed until October 1993, when the refugee board denied him refugee status and ordered him deported to Egypt. When he arrived in Cairo, Egyptian authorities promptly put him in prison (the reason is not known). Susan Semenak reported that, in January 1994, Samir wrote to Christina from his Cairo cell, professing love, and asking for $5,000 to be sent to him as soon as possible.6 He was not heard from again. Christina Finney was through with Samir Badr. The fight with Eric Belhassen was only beginning.
Belhassen already had a long disciplinary history with the Quebec Bar Association, beginning shortly after he became a lawyer.7 In 1979, he served phony lawsuits on tenants engaged in a rent dispute with their landlord, telling the tenants that the suits would be dropped if the rent was paid. He was given a severe reprimand by the bar association. In 1983, he was again reprimanded, this time for negligence and making needless presentations in a court case. In 1985, he was reprimanded once more, and his right to practise law briefly suspended, for falsifying information on a seizure order. Also in 1985, he was disciplined for having taken out abusive proceedings against an insurance company. The bar’s professional inspection committee began an investigation into his practice in 1985; it took five years to complete. The committee’s report in April 1990 concluded, “Not only does the incompetence of Mr. Belhassen put the rights of his clients in peril, but it discredits the lawyer’s profession and undermines the authority of the courts.… It is urgent to suspend the right of Eric Belhassen to practice.” In June 1992, he was ordered by the bar’s executive committee to report all his activities to a supervising lawyer. Meanwhile, he continued to practise law, and complaints about his conduct and competence continued to be made. Despite this long history, when Christina Finney complained to the bar in 1990, she was simply told that Belhassen was a lawyer in good standing.
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