Judge to rule this month on bail for Akwesasne woman wanted by U.S. in fatal human-smuggling case

Article content

Stephanie Square, the woman from Akwesasne arrested in August on an extradition request from the U.S. alleging she is responsible for the deaths of four of the nine people who drowned in an attempt to smuggle them across the Canada/U.S. border last year, says she is willing to wear a GPS-locating bracelet in order to be released while her case at the Montreal courthouse is pending.

Article content

Square, 51, also told Quebec Superior Court Justice Daniel Royer on Wednesday that she would agree to live with her mother in Akwesasne and follow a curfew in order to be released. She said she is willing to check in once a day with the Akwesasne Mokawk police, “a short walk” from her mother’s house.

Her mother, Catherine Square, 85, testified in support of the release.

“She has to follow the rules or else I call the (Akwesasne Mohawk police). They’re always just around the corner,” Catherine Square said while answering questions from defence lawyer Joēl Girard.

Stephanie Square said she will not possess a cellphone if released on bail, but she conceded when asked by prosecutor Anne-Renée Touchette that her mother and a cousin living at the same address own cellphones.

Royer will decide on whether to grant bail later this month. He noted that Square has dual citizenship in Canada and the U.S.

While answering questions from Girard, Stephanie Square said she was born and raised in Akwesasne, has a traditional Mohawk name and only lived outside the Mohawk reserve for a few years in Cornwall to help a friend raise her child. She said she and her family celebrate Mohawk traditions and that she was sexually abused at a Catholic school when she was a child.

Article content

Article content

She told the judge she was the youngest of seven siblings, but three have died in accidents.

Girard cautioned his client a few times to avoid talking about the evidence gathered in the case she is facing at a courthouse in New York.

Square has been in detention since her arrest Aug. 22. She told the judge she is in poor health, which makes being detained, after the U.S. government requested her extradition, difficult.

She is named in a warrant in a U.S. District Court charging her with conspiracy to commit alien smuggling, four counts of alien smuggling for profit and four counts of alien smuggling causing death. “Alien” is the term often used in the United States for illegal immigrants. She is alleged to have tried to smuggle four members of a Romanian family into the U.S.: Florin Iordache; his wife, Cristina (Monalisa) Zenaida Iordache; their two-year-old daughter, Evelin; and one-year-old son, Elyen.

They were among the nine people who drowned on March 29, 2023. The other five people who drowned in the botched smuggling operation were Akwesasne resident Casey Oakes and a family from the western Indian state of Gujarat. They included the father, Praveenbhai Chaudhari, 50; mother, Dakshaben, 45; son, Meet, 20; and daughter, Vidhi, 23. Square is not alleged to have tried to smuggle them.

Article content

Girard argued the bulk of the evidence contained in the extradition request is based in Canada and that, if necessary, his client should be prosecuted here.

“She is on Canadian soil. Everybody is on Canadian soil. The bodies were found on Canadian soil. The autopsies were done on Canadian soil. The death certificates were done by a doctor on Canadian soil. All the witnesses were pretty much on Canadian soil,” Girard said, adding he wonders if Canada is willing to send Square to the U.S. because of the stricter possible sentences she faces there. “What is the real implication of the U.S. authorities in this thing?”

The lawyer also argued there is no evidence to connect Square to Oakes, “the person who ended up driving the boat.”

Touchette noted that there is evidence Square continued to be involved in human smuggling despite the tragedy. That includes evidence that she used a Facebook page in her mother’s name to send a message on April 6, 2023 to a co-defendant in the U.S. case, saying: “I need a f–king boat.”

“That was less than a month after the tragic deaths of those people,” the prosecutor said. “This is the kind of person that you have. The deaths of five people (including Oakes) did not stop her. A month afterwards she needed ‘a f–king boat’.

“In the case here, nothing would stop her. Do we need to wait for another tragedy, another death of a Iordache family (to deny her bail)?”

pcherry@postmedia.com

Article content

Article content