Montreal man found guilty of promoting hatred against Jews files application for appeal

A Quebec man found guilty of wilfully promoting hatred against Jews is seeking leave to appeal his conviction.

Gabriel Sohier Chaput's lawyer wrote in an application for permission to appeal filed last week that the trial judge created the appearance of bias in the courtroom.

Sohier Chaput was found guilty of promoting hatred by a Quebec court judge in late January in connection with a 2017 article published on the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, one of hundreds of items he wrote for the site.

The trial was marked by debates between the prosecution and the defence over what facts about the Holocaust and the Nazi ideology needed to be established by an expert witness and which ones were so well known the judge could accept them without further evidence.

Lawyer Antonio Cabral also argues the trial judge erred in fact and law in his analysis of Sohier Chaput's credibility as a witness when he compared Sohier Chaput to Machiavelli and implied that he rallied his readers to the "virus of hate" without citing any concrete evidence.

He is seeking to have the guilty verdict overturned or have a new trial ordered.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 2, 2023.