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Cameron Ortis — the former RCMP intelligence official found guilty late last year of leaking secret information to police targets — will learn his fate later this morning when an Ontario Superior Court judge hands down his sentence.
The Crown is seeking a steep sentence it says suits his crimes: two consecutive sentences totalling 28 years in prison.
During a sentencing hearing last month, Crown prosecutor Judy Kliewer told Justice Robert Maranger the Crown’s proposal is “not only an appropriate but a necessary sentence.”
The defence, meanwhile, has argued that the former civilian member of the RCMP endured hardships while in custody waiting for his trial to begin and shouldn’t serve another day behind bars.
“No inmate has had to suffer what Mr. Ortis suffered,” said defence lawyer Jon Doody last month.
Ortis, 51, was found guilty in November of all six charges against him, including violating Canada’s secrets act.
Crown prosecutors successfully argued that Ortis used his position within the RCMP — leading a unit that had access to Canadian and allied intelligence — to leak sensitive information to police targets in early 2015.
The jury found Ortis guilty of leaking special operational information “without authority” to Phantom Secure CEO Vincent Ramos — who sold encrypted cellphones to organized crime members — and to Salim Henareh and Muhammad Ashraf, two men police suspected of being agents of an international money-laundering network with ties to terrorists.
The 51-year-old also was found guilty of trying to leak information to Farzam Mehdizadeh. One RCMP witness told Ortis’s trial he believes Mehdizadeh worked with “the most important money launderers in the world.”
Defence says Ortis ‘lost everything’
Kliewer argued that a more lenient sentence would send a signal to allies that Canada can’t protect their sensitive information. As a member of the Five Eyes alliance with the U.S., the U.K., New Zealand and Australia, Canada has committed to sharing and protecting pooled intelligence.
“If the consequence imposed today is not significant, that promise to our partners is hollow,” Kliewer said.
The defence told the judge that during the three years Ortis spent in custody awaiting trial, he was subjected to solitary confinement and lockdowns.
Doody said Ortis has “lost everything,” including his job, friends and savings.
The defence filed more than two dozen support letters, including one from Michael Kovrig, one of two Canadians detained in China for almost three years. Kovrig, who spent over 1,000 days in solitary confinement, said someone with Ortis’s “high intelligence and … curious mind” shouldn’t “rot in a prison cell for the sake of deterrence.”
Maranger will begin delivering his sentencing decision at 10 a.m. ET in Ottawa.
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