Umarl terrorysta

Kanada takze miala w swojej historii przygode z terroryzmem. Ekstermisci z prowincji Quebec uzywali tego instrumentu polityki przeciwko panstwu kanadyjskiemu w celu oderwania sie prowincji od Kanady i ustanowienia suwerennego wlasnego panstwa.

Niedawno zmarl jeden z liderow Frontu Wyzwolenia Quebecu (FLQ) pan Charles Gagnon. Gagnon, niedoszly ksiadz katolicki, przed smiercia zostal wielkim przeciwnikiem politycznych metod terroryzmu w cywilizowanych panstwach, takich jak Kanada. Sa po prostu nieskuteczne i niemoralne, no a poza tym, organizacje terrorystyczne nie maja szans w walce z lepiej uzbrojonym panstwem. Owczesny premier Kanady Pierre Elliott Trudeau wprowadzil stan wojenny aby zdlawic ruch terrorystyczny.

FRONT DE LIBERATION DU QUEBEC (FLQ) - Front Wyzwolenia Quebecu)
Nacjonalistyczno-separatystyczne ugrupowanie zmierzajace do oderwania francuskojezycznej czesci Kanady i utworzenia niepodleglego panstwa. Zalozone we wczesnych latach 60-ych (pierwsze akcje 1963), stosujace typowe metody terrorystyczne - porwania, zamachy bombowe, glownie wymierzone w instytucje rzadowe i przedstawicieli wladzy (Krzysztof Karolczak, "Encyklopedia Terroryzmu").

CHARLES GAGNON

FLQ leader turned back on terrorism

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Charles Gagnon, one of the leaders of the Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ), who eventually distanced himself from the terrorist movement and voted against Quebec independence in the 1980 referendum, died of cancer in Montreal on Nov.17. He was 66.
Gagnon, the youngest of 14 children in a farmer's family, was born in Ste. Cecile-du-Bic near Rimouski on March 21, 1939.
He studied for the priesthood at the seminary in Rimouski and later enrolled at the Universite de Montreal. He was the secretary of the editorial committee for the French-language publication Cite Libre, when he and Pierre Vallieres founded a terrorist cell in 1966 that launched a series of bomb attacks that killed Therese Morin, who worked at the La Grande shoe factory.
In another incident, a 16-year-old member of their cell, Jean Corbo, was killed when a bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely.
Gagnon and Vallieres fled to the United States, where they were arrested and charged with murder, manslaughter and armed robbery, and extradited back to Canada.
After almost four years in prison, Gagnon was acquitted on the murder and manslaughter charges. Released in 1970, he was again arrested under the War Measures Act and charged with sedition during the October crisis that year in which FLQ operatives kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross and kidnapped and murdered Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte.
Again, Gagnon was eventually acquitted of all charges. In later years, Gagnon dedicated himself to Marxist ideals and was active in the creation of the communist organization En lutte! In the 1980 referendum, he urged the group's members to vote no.
He eventually obtained a doctorate in political science and became a leading theoretician of the far left who argued that Canadian labourers should unite to build a socialist state.
In the 1994 documentary La liberte en colere, made by Governor-General Michaelle Jean's husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, Gagnon is quoted as saying the FLQ "was a senseless chapter in Quebec history. Maybe it's good for Bolivia, but here it made no sense."
Alan Hustak, CanWest News Service (NATIONAL POST, Thursday, December 22, 2005).

No time for 'weak-kneed people'

Just after 8 o'clock on Monday, Oct. 5, 1970, a brilliant fall morning in Montreal, four members of so-called Liberation Cell of the Front de liberation du Quebec abducted British trade commissioner James Cross from his home. In exchange for Cross's release, the men made seven demands, among them: $500,000 in gold bullion and the release of 23 "political prisoners" - fellow FLQ members in jail for terrorist acts. This was to be the first real test of Canada's new prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, at 50, just two years on the job, and, equally important, of his 37-year-old Quebec counterpart, Liberal Premier Robert Bourassa. The Quebec government wanted to appease the kidnappers by releasing at least some prisoners, but Trudeau convinced Bourassa to offer only safe passage out of the country. Within an hour of the announcement of that offer, on Saturday Oct. 10, provincial labour minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped while playing touch football outside his home on Montreal's South Shore by members of another FLQ cell.
The kidnappings sparked the implementation of the federal War Measures Act, which sent the police and army into the streets of Montreal to arrest, interrogate and detain more than 400 separatist sympathizers. Two days after its proclamation, Laporte was dead, strangled with his own gold neck chain and stuffed into the trunk of an old car. His murder sparked revulsion against political terrorism in Quebec and across the country. Laporte's murderers were eventually found and convicted. Cross's abductors gave up in December, releasing him and going into exile in Cuba and later France; some of them eventually returned to Quebec. The October Crisis transformed Pierre Trudeau, cementing his reputation for all time as a tough leader who would not back down. "All I can say is, 'go on and bleed,'" he told a CBC reporter in a famous interview on Parliament Hill in the midst of the crisis. "But it is more important to keep law and order in society than to be worried about weak-kneed people" (R.S., MACLEAN'S, October 9, 2000).