Saturday, March 03, 2007

The Basi & Virk Case - Supreme Court Schedule - Questions Clarified

There has been some understandable confusion amongst media and interested members of the public about the scheduling of BC Supreme Court appearances and filing of applications by the defence and Crown in recent days regarding the trial of former provincial ministerial aides David Basi and Bob Virk and government aide Aneal Basi.

In particular, there was an unscheduled teleconference with Justice Elizabeth Bennett, defence and Crown this past week. There was not, however, anything filed with BC Supreme Court on Friday March 2 or Thursday March 1, contrary to rumours.

Here is the best schedule possible based on current information I have:

February 26 - the defence filed a lengthy application for disclosure - some of the contents have been widely reported. See my article on this blog here.

March 7 - BC Supreme Court - Pre-trial conference scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. but may start at 9:30 a.m. This conference will address trial scheduling and other issues. This is the only BC Supreme Court appearance by the defence and Crown prior to the trial start on April 2.

March 14 - Filing only - the Crown responds to the defence disclosure application of February 26 by filing with the Registry of the BC Supreme Court.

March 21 - Filing only - two documents - 1) the defence files a Charter of Rights application related to aspect of the case and 2) the defence responds to the Crown's reply to the disclosure application of February 26 NOTE: The Charter application was originally scheduled for March 5 but was put over to this date.

April 2 - BC Supreme Court - trial begins.

Please note that this is not an official version, but a reasonably accurate summary based on information I have obtained from those close to the trial.





3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bill your coverage of the leg raid as been nothing short of exemplary. Your fellow journalists have been woefully lacking in their reporting. After the first wave of hype immediately following the raids where it was already decided by the rcmp through their leaks of very damaging information to the media that the principles, most notably basi and virk were guilty (does this sound like a familiar pattern of behavior from the rcmp), you have actually taken the time to peel back layer upon layer of spin to start exposing the real facts behind this case. The more I see the more concerned I become about what was really happening behind the scenes. I still have no logical explanation why the lobbyists have not been charged for allegations of serious criminal misconduct. Perhaps you can start providing some answers to a very serious question.

George the Reformer said...

Ah, the lobbyists are testifying to keep themselves out of jail.

Anonymous said...

Gosh Bill, nothing may have happend on Mar 01 2007 even though the list for Vancouver Supreme Court listed all the charges on the three guys? So I guess from what you found out I was partner to misinformation. I did keep the page in a PDF File. If the court page means nothing, just jow does one keep up?
dl