Ottawa police bust cousins ​​of officers who filed force cases

Ottawa police have blamed the “gang-affiliated” cousins ​​of two of their own officers who sued the police for tapping their and their families’ phones, claiming the defendants were at the top of one of three drug trafficking networks.

Police allege Bayle Khandid, 31, and Bile Khandid, 33, took cocaine to the ring and ran, respectively. Two brothers are on the list Among 17 people facing 149 charges over “Project Champion” An 18-month investigation targeting organized crime and narcotics networks operating in Ottawa.

According to police sources, Bayle and Bile Khandid are the same people named in the police phone tapping case.

Chief Eric Stubbs was adamant Thursday that the results of the investigation targeting two of the officers’ cousins ​​would lead to police charges. Landmark $2.5 million lawsuit This statement – ​​announced on the heels of a major budget request and days before the coroner’s inquest into the death of Abdirahman Abdi – had nothing to do with anything other than the logistics of the inquest.

“This is an independent project based on intelligence, evidence and knowledge that led us down this path 18 months ago,” Stubbs told reporters on Thursday. “That’s absolutely independent of anything else… There comes a time when you have to take action and make an arrest, and that’s exactly what we did.”

In the lawsuit, filed against the agency in 2023 and revealed by CBC this summer, five Somali officers allege that the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) racially discriminated against them and that their and their family members’ phones were illegally tapped in 2021. These police interventions were illegal.

Stubbs did not discuss any internal influence on the arrests or any impact on the investigation of knowledge that the Khandid brothers were the primary target.

“We’re not going to go into detail about any challenges we’ve faced on this project or any twists and turns. That’s something that will come out if anything comes to light in a court proceeding or hearing,” he said.

In fact, court proceedings revealed some of these difficulties.

Police operations targeted the same people

Project Champion appears to be targeting the same people as 2021’s “Project Game.”

Project Game, which was never announced, focused on historic unsolved murders, primarily two in 2018, according to court documents previously obtained and reported by CBC.

Just five days after receiving judicial authorization to wiretap the private communications of several targets, including a man named Yasin Mohamed, who is now accused of being a member of the organization, Ottawa police announced the first project as a “task force” examining nearly two dozen unsolved murders in April 2021. also announced. Khandid ring.

During the task force investigation, police appealed for the public’s help in solving unsolved cases and highlighted only evidentiary deficiencies in the 2018 killings of Tarek Dakhil and Yonis Barkhadle, suggesting these were cases of interest to investigators.

No charges were brought against Mohamed in connection with the project, but during the undercover wiretapping investigation in which Mohamed was targeted, his fiancée, a judge’s clerk, discovered by examining confidential court papers that his private communications had been intercepted by the police. .

HE He told her he lost his job and was accused of a crime.

According to court documents, “following the revelation of the wiretap, intercepted communications…substantially ceased” and the murders remained unsolved. Still, no murder charges were brought from either project.

internal trust issues

A second and third timeline emerge from a $2.5 million lawsuit filed by five Somali officers in 2023.

According to the allegation in that case, police officers Liban Farah and Mohamed Islam have cousins ​​who are “involved in gang-related criminal activity.”

The lawsuit alleges the two cousins ​​were potential subjects of a historic gun and gang “project.” The lawsuit identifies these two cousins ​​as Bayle and Bile Khandid, alleged drug traffickers and leaders of one of the networks that police say they busted.

The lawsuit alleges that Somali kinship ties were “the only conceivable basis for OPS to obtain wiretaps and blanket warrants.” “OPS relied on racist and stereotypical beliefs about Black men and Somali families by misrepresenting Farah and Islam’s relationships with cousins ​​with whom they had no relationship and had not seen in years.”

The lawsuit details Liban Farah’s continued efforts to expose her family connections.

“When Farah first joined the Arms and Gangs unit in 2018, he immediately disclosed his connection to Bile and Bayle to a staff sergeant.” In 2020, he left the room immediately after overhearing guns and gang officers talking specifically about a police project and the brothers.

According to the lawsuit and court documents, a murder wiretap for Project Game was conducted between April 7 and June 7, 2021; These exact interception dates are based on the Ministry of Public Prosecution’s Const. Liban Farah said that their phones were tapped.

The police may have the legal authority to prevent “primary” and “secondary” targets, but they have no obligation to inform the targets which of the two they are. Project Game ended in September 2021.

The lawsuit filed by five officers lists two other time periods allegedly committed by Ottawa police.

One of them began in late April and lasted 60 days, according to a notice received by Const. Faisal Bila Hussein. According to the lawsuit, the final wiretap lasted from late June to late August and involved Farah, Islam, their spouses and family members, as well as Const. Abdullah Ahmed.

These wiretaps appear to be unrelated to Project Game’s work and continue to raise questions about how many different judicial powers Ottawa police are given to tap their officers’ phones at any given time, and for what reasons.