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A Swiss man who pleaded guilty to punching a protester in the face outside an Ottawa defence conference in 2024 was given an absolute discharge Wednesday before exiting the courtroom to angry shouts from supporters of the victim.<\/p>\n
David Henschel’s discharge includes a finding of guilt, but no conviction or conditions to follow. He has 14 days to pay a $5,000 victim surcharge.<\/p>\n
“Your behaviour on the day in question was criminal. It caused harm. However, having considered everything, in my view, the appropriate disposition is an absolute discharge,” Justice Norman Boxall told the court.<\/p>\n
Henschel, who has a military background, stood at attention as the discharge was granted and saluted after the judge read it out.<\/p>\n
Supporters of the woman he punched shouted “shame” in the courtroom after the decision and chanted “Racist, racist, racist!” as Henschel left.<\/p>\n
The Crown has already filed a notice of appeal, which calls the sentence “demonstrably unfit.”<\/p>\n
Pleaded guilty to assault<\/p>\n
Henschel, 58, was an employee of Swiss munitions firm Rheinmetall Waffe Munition Schweiz AG when he attended the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CANSEC) conference in May 2024.<\/p>\n
Court previously heard that as Henschel walked toward Ottawa\u2019s EY Centre he encountered a 21-year-old woman in a hijab who told him he was “actively supporting genocide” by attending the conference.<\/p>\n
Henschel swung his arm, intentionally striking the protester in the face with a closed fist. As the woman dropped to the ground, Henschel continued walking toward the conference centre, pushing another protester before police stepped in and arrested him.<\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty to assault in court last year.<\/p>\n
Assistant Crown attorney Moiz Karimjee argued Henschel should spend time in jail for the assault. Henschel’s lawyer James Foord called for an absolute discharge.<\/p>\n
The defence relied on the evidence of a psychiatrist who said low blood sugar had caused Henschel to become “irritable,” while his prior military experience had left him with PTSD, specifically a fear of crowds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The woman who was struck said in a victim impact statement that she had been subjected to a “targeted attack meant to hurt and silence me.”<\/p>\n
2nd sentencing date<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s appearance was a second attempt at sentencing after Henschel failed to attend court in person earlier this month as expected, instead appearing virtually from Switzerland.<\/p>\n
That sparked a strong reaction from Karimjee, who told court the Henschel is “not above the law.”<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer James Foord reiterated that his client suffers from PTSD had “not been doing well at all.”<\/p>\n
Boxall agreed to rescheduled the sentencing, warning that if Henschel failed to appear in person a second time a bench warrant would be issued for his arrest and he would be charged with failure to appear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-819426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}