Tribunal decision involving local man won't be known for months

Harrison accused of posting web messages promoting murders

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing involving a Georgetown man accused of posting hate propaganda on a Toronto website concluded Wednesday, but a decision has not yet been rendered. A decision is not expected for three to four months, said Giacomo Vigna, a lawyer for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, who took part in the hearing. The accused, Craig Harrison, 40, stormed out of the hearing room in Toronto Monday yelling and accusing a witness of slander, and chose not to participate in the hearing after that. Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman, who filed the initial complaint, testified he believed comments he found on the website www.freedomsite.org were posted by Harrison because one of them referred to a crime Harrison had already been convicted of. The posting said: "I'm the guy who got 2 years for thumpin that nigger on main street." Harrison, a Halton Hills mayoral candidate in 1994,spent two years in jail when he was convicted in 1996 of assault causing bodily harm after attacking a black man, a Georgetown shopkeeper, while shouting racial slurs. During the hearing, an affidavit from Marc Lemire, administrator of the freedom site website, confirmed that Harrison's email address was used to register two screen-names that came up attached to messages returned when Warman searched the website's message board for "craig" and "harrison," said Warman. Harrison has been accused of posting messages calling for the murder of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's family, blacks, non-whites, francophones and aboriginals. "It's pretty serious what's been said there, when you talk about killing people," said Vigna. At the hearing Tuesday a representative from Bell Sympatico confirmed that six or seven posting times Warman attributed to Harrison on the website matched times that Harrison and his wife Susan Holmes's computer was logged onto the Internet, Warman said. "When you put all the pieces of the puzzle (together), the globality of the circumstantial evidence leads in only one direction-- the identity is Mr. Craig S. Harrison," said Vigna. If found responsible for the postings, Harrison may have to pay a penalty of up to $10,000 and face a permanent court order preventing him from posting hate propaganda on the Internet.