Khurrum Awan the liar, part 8

I've been blogging for about a year and a half, and by far the most enjoyable days of it were the ones I spent live-blogging Mark Steyn's show trial at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal last June.

I didn't enjoy the trial, of course -- it's not joyful to witness the Canadian legal system be brought into disrepute. I sat in a court house crowded with journalists who were stunned by the sham they were watching. As the Vancouver Sun's Ian Mulgrew wrote at the time, "The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal is murdering its own reputation". Yet the three kangaroos running the show were oblivious to the scandal they were participating in. Or they knew, but they just didn't give a damn.

One of the reasons I enjoyed blogging from that trial was that it was the first time that the anti-Semites at the Canadian Islamic Congress had to face cross-examination for their conduct. Their anti-Semite-in-chief, Mohamed Elmasry -- who had boasted on national TV that all adult Israelis were legitimate targets for terrorist murders -- refused to take the witness stand, the coward. But bizarrely, his young protege, a Toronto law student named Khurrum Awan, took the stand in his place.

That, of course, is a procedure unknown to any court -- to have a stunt double doing your testimony for you. Awan wasn't the complainant; he wasn't a British Columbian, the jurisdiction that held the trial; he wasn't an expert in anything. He was just some guy who was testifying so that his boss, Elmasry, could avoid answering tough questions. The idea of sending in a proxy -- a PR flack; a stunt double; an actor; whatever -- to give testimony on behalf of the real complainant is novel in law. But then these kangaroo courts aren't run by real judges with real rules of procedure -- they just make it up as they go along.

My point is that it was an absolute pleasure watching Maclean's trio of top-gun lawyers tear Awan's buffoonery apart sentence by sentence. If I hadn't had the outlet of my blog, I might well have laughed or cheered aloud.

My favourite part was when Julian Porter, Q.C., got Awan to admit that he had been lying to the Canadian media for months when he had publicly claimed that he had said to Maclean's that their demanded "rebuttal" to Mark Steyn's article could be authored by someone that the Canadian Islamic Congress and Maclean's mutually agreed upon. Under oath, Awan admitted that was a lie -- he had demanded that Maclean's submit to an author of the CIC's own choosing. And, under oath again, Porter got Awan to admit that he also tried to shake Maclean's down for thousands of dollars, too.

It was like watching a snowman melt in a spring rain.

Here are my series of blog entries from that day called "Khurrum Awan the liar": 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Well, I'd like to add an eighth instalment to my series. I missed it when I first read it in the Star's letter to the editors section (scroll down), but Mark Steyn points it out: Awan implies that he was the complainant against me and the Western Standard magazine for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Awan writes:

Ezra Levant accuses Canada's human rights commissions of censorship for investigating our hate-speech complaints about his publishing of cartoons depicting Muslims...

Uh, nope. The complaints against me were filed by a Pakistani Jew-hater named Syed Soharwardy, and Soharwardy's fellow censors at the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities. Awan and the Canadian Islamic Congress had nothing to do with it.

Who cares, really.

But it's so curious: what is it about Awan that just makes him say or write anything -- anything at all -- no matter if it's true or not?

I can understand if he has an urge to lie. It's called taqiyya. But surely any intelligent liar would choose a lie that is not so easily check-able. Why lie about something that can be so easily disproven?

It's a small point. But it brings me back to the fabulous vivisection performed on Awan by Porter. And I guess it just gave me a fond trip down memory lane.

P.S. At Steyn's trial last year, Awan was revealed to be a non-party, non-expert, no-standing witness. And it was more bizarre than that. Awan was not only a stand-in witness for Elmasry -- he was co-counsel for Elmasry, along with Faisal Joseph.

Could you imagine: someone's lawyer (or articling student, to be more accurate), being a "witness" for his client, too? It's the definition of conflict of interest.

And then take that conflict of interest to the power of two: when Awan was testifying, he was being led by Faisal Joseph, Elmasry's other lawyer (and co-counsel with Awan). And -- here's the gorgeous part -- Awan testified that he was going to go to work for Joseph at his firm, as a lawyer.

To recap:

1. Awan wasn't a party or an expert in any way. Yet he testified.

2. But he was also co-counsel for the complainant and party in the case, Elmasry.

3. The lawyer who examined Awan was Awan's co-counsel, Joseph.

4. And Joseph had offered Awan a job at his firm.

Crazy.

Just for fun, I went to Faisal Joseph's law firm, Lerners LLP. And Awan is not in fact working there -- see for yourself.

Did he not do a good enough job at the show trial?

Did the Lerners partners read about his antics, and scotch his job offer?

Did Awan's serial lies cause them to disown him?

Are Joseph and Awan still buddies?

What's going on? Other than being an unimpressive emcee at CIC events, what's Awan up to these days? Is he even lawyering?

The Law Society of Upper Canada directory suggests he's not.

A commenter points out, I'm wrong: Awan is indeed an articling student at Lerner's.