Prosecutors want judge to consider accused bomber’s MO

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This article was published 11/12/2017 (3056 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The modus operandi of an accused bomber is at play now that a provincial court judge has heard all of the evidence against Guido Amsel.

Crown prosecutors are urging Judge Tracey Lord to compare similarities among four different bombing scenes they argue show the 51-year-old former autobody shop owner targeted his ex-wife and lawyers who represented the couple during their long civil-litigation dispute.

Amsel has pleaded not guilty to five counts of attempted murder, aggravated assault, mischief and explosives-related charges after three explosive packages were mailed in Winnipeg in July 2015, and a December 2013 explosion left a crater in the exterior wall of Amsel’s ex-wife’s home.

Prosecutors don’t know how the 2013 bomb was constructed, but the three packages received in 2015 all contained a dangerous homemade explosive called triacetone triperoxide. Court has heard the three mailed bombs were sent to the accused’s ex-wife Iris Amsel, her lawyer Maria Mitousis and the law firm that formerly represented the accused. The bombs were contained in a digital voice recorder, a notebook and an electronic greeting card.

Before the Crown closes its case against Amsel, prosecutors want the judge to allow “similar-fact evidence” they say links each of the four bombings. Amsel’s defence lawyers opposed the request Monday, arguing some of the supposed links are of “very limited value” in court.

It’s not fair to say the four bombings are similar because they were all meant to cause grievous bodily harm, defence lawyer Jeremy Kostiuk argued.

“To say that all of these were designed to do that and note it as a similarity is like pointing to the fact that three bank robberies were all designed to get money as a similarity between them. It goes without saying that this is the case, and it’s not a similarity that can assist your honour in terms of modus operandi,” Kostiuk told Judge Lord.

But Crown prosecutor Chris Vanderhooft said the judge can’t ignore the bigger picture: the series of bombings are “far beyond coincidence,” he argued.

“All of the individuals who are targets of these bombs are people that Mr. Amsel believes were assisting Iris Amsel in this fraudulent behaviour that he was so convinced of,” Vanderhooft said.

“We say it’s far beyond coincidence that Iris Amsel gets not one but two separate bombs on different occasions and that Maria Mitousis, who was acting for her as counsel, and his former counsel, who withdrew on him and he accused of being paid off by Iris Amsel and Maria Mitousis, were the targets in 2015.”

Amsel’s DNA was found at two explosion scenes: at the July 3, 2015 explosion at Mitousis’s River Avenue law office, as well as on a piece of string at an explosion scene outside his ex-wife’s home in the RM of St. Clements.

The string is key to the Crown’s theory that the 2013 explosion, like the mailed bombs, also involved a “victim-initiated” explosive. Vanderhooft suggested Monday all four bombs were similar because they all required victim actions to explode, such as pushing a button or opening a card or book.

The 2013 explosion happened overnight, causing damage to Iris Amsel’s front door and the exterior of her garage. Iris Amsel previously testified she initially thought the damage was caused by vandalism, but debris from the blast was found in a neighbour’s yard 70 metres away. Vanderhooft suggested a trip wire was meant to set off the bomb when Iris or her boyfriend unplugged their car in the morning, but it went off while they were sleeping instead.

“A random piece of string might be meaningless, but a piece of string that has a pin on one end and is apparently tied to the vehicle with the other, and the DNA of the accused is actually on it, is no longer a random piece of string. It suggests, we say, a victim-initiated device. It is a trip wire. It has a retaining pin on one end that can set a bomb off,” Vanderhooft said.

The Crown has argued it isn’t surprising DNA wasn’t found at the other two crime scenes since police bomb robots blasted explosive packages with water cannons before they detonated.

Judge Lord is set to deliver her decision on the similar-fact evidence Tuesday.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay