Let him out...

G20 protester still in jail

By Charlotte Prong Parkhill, Chronicle Staff
http://www.waterloochronicle.ca/news/article/215923

Jul 28, 2010

A member of local activist group AW@L is still in jail more than a month after he was arrested in an early morning raid at a Toronto home on June 26.

Erik Lankin, 22, of Kitchener, has been denied bail and is currently being held at Maplehurst Correctional Complex. He has been charged wih multiple conspiracy offences.

Dan Kellar, host of AW@L Radio, said Lankin is allowed visitors twice a week.

“He’s strong and believes in continued resistance, and solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island” Kellar said.

AW@L was formerly known as Anti-War at Laurier, but now the name "stands for social and ecological justice,” he said.

It has been reported that law enforcement agencies were monitoring anarchist activities since 2009 and had infiltrated activist groups in southern Ontario. Kellar believes AW@L is one of them.

“Our group was infiltrated by someone who has the ability to lie to people straight-faced,” he said. “Basically, a sociopath that they put into a community organization.”

Kellar said that though he does identify himself as an anarchist, the group includes people from a spectrum of ideologies.

Multiple AW@L members, including Kellar himself, were arrested at the summit, held in the temporary detention centre for 16 to 22 hours, and released without charges.

Kellar’s radio co-host Alex Hundert was also arrested in a guns-drawn raid in Toronto on June 26, before the protests began.

He was released on bail July 19, but the Crown is appealing that release.

“The situation seems like a blatant contradiction of basic human rights that are enshrined in the Canadian charter,” said Laurier professor Richard Walsh-Bowers.

The newly formed K-W Political Prisoner Support Committee held a concert Tuesday in the Waterloo public square to raise funds for what are expected to be massive legal bills.