Tamara Lich, one of the organizers behind the Freedom Convoy, has won an appeal and will now be granted bail.
Initially taken into custody by police in Ottawa on the evening of Feb. 17, Lich has remained behind bars since. At a previous bail hearing on Feb. 22, Lich had her request for bail denied by Justice Julie Bourgeois, a former Liberal Party candidate who Lich accused of holding a political bias in the case.Late week, Lich was back in front of a judge requesting a bail review, a hearing that was
documented by Ottawa-based lawyer David Anber.
Today, a judge reversed the original decision and granted Lich bail.
Anber, who has been representing some of those charged for their actions during nearly month long Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa, shared some of the details of Lich's bail on Twitter.
Lich will be required to leave Ottawa within 24 hours, to be out of Ontario within 72 hours, alongside orders to stay off of social media, not protest against COVID policies and to have no contact with any of the co-accused.
Comment: Additional reporting from
CP24:
[...]
Lich -- described by a lawyer for convoy protesters in February as "the spark that lit this fire" -- was one of the most public faces of the protest that saw crowds move in with big-rigs and other vehicles in late January to protest the federal Liberal government, vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions.
Since her arrest, her supporters have called her a political prisoner during her time in jail, and over the weekend some rallied outside the Ottawa jail where she is being held to demand her release.
That push reached all the way to the United Kingdom Monday, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in London for meetings with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was greeted outside 10 Downing Street by protesters spewing a chorus of expletives, and waving signs demanding that Lich be freed.
Lich was initially denied bail on Feb. 22 after Ontario Court Justice Julie Bourgeois deemed her detention was "necessary for the protection and safety of the public."
In a bail review hearing last week, Lich's lawyer argued that decision may have been tainted by the fact that Bourgeois ran as a federal Liberal candidates in the 2011 election and expressed that her own community had been affected by the protest.
On Monday, Superior Court Justice John M. Johnston found no merit to those arguments, and said the case was not about politics but the rule of law.
But he did find several other errors of law in that decision. He said the previous justice was too subjective when assessing the gravity of the offences, weighing them against the impacts to Ottawa's residents rather than objectively comparing them to other offences in the Criminal Code. He also said that while Bourgeois determined Lich could serve a lengthy prison sentence of up to 10 years, he thought it very unlikely she would serve more than two years if convicted.
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Comment: Additional reporting from CP24: