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A Calgary judge has ruled four men are guilty of rioting, possession of a weapon and assault in relation to an incident police have described as \u201cthe largest violent event to happen in our city in recent memory.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sept. 2, 2023, two groups of Eritreans \u2014 described in court as having fundamentally opposing views to political unrest and military events back home \u2014 fought each other in Falconridge Plaza.<\/p>\n
Nearly three years after the event, Justice Lloyd Robertson said it wasn\u2019t difficult to conclude it was indeed a riot, and that the four accused took part.<\/p>\n
“The Sept. 2, 2023, gathering was both alarming and violent,” said Robertson in his decision that took over two hours to read aloud.<\/p>\n
“The chaos and disorder which occurred at the event was without precedent in the history of public gatherings in Calgary.” <\/p>\n
Robertson said Amanuel Kiflezgi Sium, Yamin Okubahanes, Gebrekid Hailemariam and Musie Estifanos assaulted a woman on the other side of the conflict with sticks and poles.<\/p>\n
Okubahanes was found not guilty of an additional charge of mischief.<\/p>\n
The judge said in one case, an officer felt like they wouldn\u2019t survive the encounter.<\/p>\n
Court heard that in the initial 10-minute encounter, 97 sticks and pipes, 118 rocks and similar projectiles, and 18 bottles were thrown, according to a police count.<\/p>\n
The riot<\/p>\n
That September afternoon, it took nearly 200 officers, tear gas grenades and nearly 2,000 rounds of PepperBalls to separate the clashing sides in the city\u2019s northeast.<\/p>\n
That day, two factions of the Eritrean community had separate events planned a couple of kilometres apart, and police were expecting violence \u201cbased on similar events in Toronto and Edmonton\u201d due to building tensions over the country’s authoritarian government.<\/p>\n
Police estimates of the number of people in the clash differ, from between roughly 150 to 300.<\/p>\n
During the violent outbreak, police were threatened, vehicle and business windows were smashed, and 12 people were taken to hospital, according to CPS.<\/p>\n
In the days after the clash, Calgary police established a task force to investigate. They initially laid a total of 63 charges against 28 people \u2014 20 people from one group and eight from the other \u2014 but all charges laid against the latter group were dropped<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n Reporters Without Borders has ranked Eritrea as more repressive than North Korea<\/a>.<\/p>\n Eritrea has one of the highest numbers of refugees per capita<\/a>, as people flee violence, detention without trial in military-run prisons, and forced conscription<\/a>, according to the UN.<\/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":823136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,48],"class_list":["post-823135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-ca","tag-calgary","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823135","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=823135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}