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Five skinheads enter plea bargain in gurdwara murder

Arthur J Pais in Vancouver

Balwant Singh Gill does not like dealing with the police. As the moderate head of the Guru Nanak Temple here, he has often interacted with the police in the past two years as the tension between moderates and hard-liners led to a number of melees.

But when he took a telephone call from the prosecutor's office a few days ago and listened patiently to the outlining of a plea bargain, he wanted to hear more.

For he was being told that five skinheads who had beaten to death 65-year-old Nirmal Singh Gill, the temple's caretaker, over a year ago were prepared to enter a plea, which would spare the state a huge amount of money and time in a protracted trial. Balwant Singh Gill was being asked to let the members of temple's executive committee know about the developments. He was also pleased that the five, who will be sentenced in three months, will be sentenced under a 1996 amendment to the criminal code which requires more severe punishment for racially motivated crimes.

He says the murder had shaken him and other members of the committee strongly, not only because Nirmal Singh Gill had been associated with the temple for many years but also because police and many community members initially suspected that Singh had been a victim of intra-Sikh fighting. But the police started getting tips from anonymous people within a few days of the killing that a few skinheads were going around local bars boasting of killing a Sikh in a parking lot near the gurdwara.

"We would have loved to see them convicted and sent away for life," Gill said, especially when he had heard the four had not expressed any remorse, but were confessing to the killing because of the fear they may get longer sentences.

The state, though it felt its case was somewhat weak because it could not convict beyond the high threshold of reasonable doubt, was not going to give up -- unless the four pleaded guilty and sought a somewhat leaner sentence.

The five are Lee Nikkel, 18, Daniel Miloszewski, 21, Radoslaw Synderek, 23, Robert Kluch, 25 and Nathan Leblanc, 26.

They are members of one of the many white supremacist groups that have sprung up in the past decade in Vancouver and the rest of British Columbia province, and the American states of Washington and Oregon.

Nirmal Singh Gill was a random victim; the five had not known him but might have seen him going to the gurdwara in the early hours of each day. He was killed at about 3 am as he crossed the parking lot to prepare the gurdwara for early morning worshippers.

The state's highest officials, including Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh, have hailed the plea bargain decision.

Dosanjh said the fight against racism has been strengthened by the wide exposure the killing had received in the Canadian media.

Vigorous prosecution of racist crimes was one of the many means to fight the social evil, he said, adding "a campaign you wage in terms of education and awareness" was important, too.

Legal experts and defence lawyers were watching this case carefully because it is the first major case handled by a British Columbia court after the criminal code had been amended to define hate crimes, said Sergeant Rick McKenna, who heads the British Columbia's special hate crime unit.

"There is not much of history in it," he says, referring to the section 718.2 of the criminal code.

In consulting with Gill and other Sikh leaders, the prosecutors wanted the community to know it was the best arrangement under the circumstances.

One of the defence lawyers, Ian Donaldson, told reporters that "everyone concluded" that the plea bargain was the "the most appropriate conclusion" but he was going to fight against his client being sentenced under section 718.2 of the criminal code.

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