Member of Canada Soccer support team detained in France for alleged drone use

Canadian judoka Priscilla Gagne isn’t enjoying the easy ride she once expected at the Paris Paralympics.

But as the three-time Paralympian enters her final Games, she welcomes the competition — because new rules mean more blind athletes are getting a chance on the mat.

Born with the genetic eye disorder retinitis pigmentosa, Gagne is categorically blind and will compete in the women’s J1 57-kilogram event Thursday at Champ de Mars Arena.

The 38-year-old from Sarnia, Ont., was Canada’s opening ceremonies flag-bearer at the Tokyo Games in 2021, where she won silver in the 52-kg weight class despite sparring against judokas with better vision.

In previous Paralympics, judokas with varying degrees of impaired vision were lumped together. The Paris Games will have two distinct categories to help level the playing field: J1 for fully blind athletes and J2 for those with partial vision.

“I decided to continue to Paris because of the vision classification changes, anticipating it would be a walk-through,” Gagne said. “And it’s not a cakewalk, because of all these amazing athletes coming out.”

Canadian coach Andrzej Sadej, a key figure in the development of high-level judo in the country, said Gagne was the only fully blind athlete competing for gold in Tokyo.

When the new classification was implemented after the Tokyo Games, Sadej said the Canadian Paralympic Committee and Own The Podium were keen to invest in Gagne’s training.

“They said, ‘Well she is a walking gold medal in Paris with a new classification,’” Sadej said. “Because she was by far the best blind athlete out of all of the male and female divisions in Tokyo.”

Instead of dominating the field, Gagne enters the Paris Games ranked fourth. She said the door has opened to a whole new class of talented blind judokas from countries around the world — athletes who didn’t get the opportunity to compete under the previous classification.

“It’s not only good for (the blind athletes), it’s good for the entire population in their country, the disabled population in their country,” Gagne said. “To me, it’s a beautiful thing to see all these people coming out, even though they’re really hard and we didn’t expect it.”

Sadej, a former national team coach and executive at Judo Canada, has coached the Canadian Paralympic judo team for 10 years and served on the International Blind Sport Federation’s judo sport committee since 2015.

The former Polish judoka said before Tokyo only four per cent of para judo athletes would have qualified as completely blind, a number that has increased exponentially under new rules.

“Only three years later, more than half of the people who are classified right now are blind,” Sadej said. “And the numbers are similar, 600 (total athletes) before Tokyo, 600 now.

“It shows you that you had 200-plus athletes across the world who were blind and who are good judo players, who were not able to compete because they were replaced by people who are (less) visually impaired or not visually impaired.”

Some of those athletes, Gagne and Sadej alleged, included competitors with no significant vision impairment.

“Some of them even had driver’s licences and motorcycle licences,” Gagne said.

Sadej, who played an important role in the fight to implement new classifications as part of the sport commission, expressed concerns about ethical standards across countries, highlighting how the previous rules were “inadequate.”

“There were many athletes from different parts of the world who competed in able-body judo successfully, but not successfully enough to benefit financially from winning medals,” he said. “So if they had glasses on, they decided to switch to the Paralympic movement, and the classification methodology was so inadequate and was so corrupted that it was relatively easy to get to the classification.”

While he firmly believes athletes will continue to cheat, Sadej said judo’s new classifications will make it more difficult for athletes to be dishonest, particularly in blind judo.

Although the competition remains stiff, Gagne and Sadej are confident she can bring home gold.

“I expect great things, and wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t,” Gagne said. “Aiming for the podium, the top of the podium and ready to lay it all out there for the last time.”

The sport is in a much better place than when she first took to a judo mat 15 years ago, but Gagne is “100 per cent” certain she’s ready to move on after Paris.

“I’m 38 years old, and my body is 38 years old, and this is my third cycle,” she said. “My dream was to go to one, and I got to go to three, and medal at potentially two, so that dream is accomplished, like, three times over.”

In her post-Paralympic career, Gagne plans to do more conferences about the inclusion of people with disabilities and continue to teach self-defence courses for vulnerable populations.

She also hopes to become a published author, with two children’s books already written and a personal memoir to come.

“I’m ready for that next chapter,” she said. “I’m ready to experience the things that I exchanged or laid down for a time in order to compete at such a high level. I’m ready to pick those things up and see where they’ll lead.

“I’m excited to have that spontaneity back, to be able to, you know, fly off the seat of my pants.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 4, 2024.

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — Families of those killed in what authorities called an attempted jailbreak in Congo’s biggest prison are demanding answers from the government as activists denounce what they say are inhumane conditions in the nation’s overcrowded penitentiaries.

Officials have said that 129 people died, including some who were shot by guards and soldiers, and others who died in a stampede trying to escape the Makala Central Prison in the capital of Kinshasa early on Monday. Justice Minister Constant Mutamba called the attempted jailbreak a “premeditated act of sabotage” and promised a “stern response.”

But rights groups and the opposition called for an independent investigation, accusing the government of using excessive force and covering up the true death toll. One prominent activist said more than 200 were killed.

Everixk Nzeu, a 25-year-old who died in the chaos, was arrested two months ago in the western part of Kinshasa, and transferred to Makal on a provisional arrest warrant, his mother Madeleine Mbalaka told The Associated Press — without trial or conviction.

“I visited my son on Sunday, he was fine,” Mbalaka said. “But around 6 a.m., his roommates called us to tell us he was dead.”

Her son left behind an 8-year-old daughter.

The family has not been able to see his body, she said, adding that they had gone to the morgue but were turned back.

“I ask the Congolese authorities to provide us with explanations because we do not know exactly what happened,” she pleaded. “I ask that justice be done.”

Congolese Interior Minister Jacquemin Shabani said on the social media platform X that a provisional assessment showed that 24 inmates were fatally shot by “warning” shots fired by guards as they tried to escape the facility.

“There are also 59 injured people taken into care by the government, as well as some cases of women raped,” he said, adding that order had been restored at the prison, part of which was burned in the attempted jailbreak.

It wasn’t immediately clear if all 129 fatalities were inmates and officials did not say how the stampede happened. Shabani also did not elaborate on the alleged rape cases at Makal, which has both female and male inmates.

The European Union on Wednesday called on Congolese authorities “to quickly shed light on these tragic events in order to establish the various responsibilities, including with regard to respect for human rights and the rule of law.”

Martin Fayulu, an opposition leader, compared the death toll to “summary executions” and said it was an “unacceptable crime that cannot go unpunished.”

However, Emmanuel Adu Cole, a prominent prison rights activist, told the AP that there were more than 200 dead, many of them shot, citing videos shared from the prison as well as according to inmates he spoke to. The AP was unable to independently verify the videos.

Gunfire inside the prison started around midnight on Sunday and lasted into Monday morning, local residents in the area said.

“Shots were ringing out everywhere,” said Stéphane Matondo, who lives nearby, adding that military vehicles arrived shortly after and the main road to the prison was blocked.

Monday’s tragedy underscored the overcrowding and dire living conditions in Congo’s prisons. Makala, Congo’s largest, with a capacity for 1,500 people, holds over 12,000 inmates, most of whom are awaiting trial, Amnesty International said in its latest country report.

The facility has recorded previous jailbreaks, including in 2017 when members of a religious sect stormed the prison and freed dozens of inmates.

Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala, a prominent Congolese journalist who was recently detained in the prison for months, spoke of its “deplorable and inhumane” conditions and how inmates constantly lack food, water, access to sanitary facilities and medical care.

“Makala prison, seen from the inside, looks more like a concentration camp than a penitentiary,” he told the AP. “The conditions of detention are absolutely deplorable and inhumane. The inmates are treated like sub-humans, deprived of their fundamental rights and subjected to inhuman living conditions.”

Congo’s deputy Justice Minister Samuel Mbemba Kabuya blamed the country’s judicial system for overcrowding in prisons, saying people are quickly jailed at the early stage of their trials. Mutamba, the justice minister, announced a ban on the transfer of inmates from Makala and pledged that authorities will build a new prison, among other efforts to reduce overcrowding.

But these pledges have little meaning for the victims’ families of the victims, who said they were being kept in the dark about the fate of their loved ones.

“It is sad that prisoners die as if they were animals,” said Joyce Imongo, whose 43-year-old brother was among those who died on Monday.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A court in Greenland on Wednesday again extended the time in custody for a prominent anti-whaling activist as Denmark considers an extradition request from Japan.

The court ruled that Canadian-American Paul Watson must remain in detention until Oct. 2 while Denmark’s justice ministry considers the request. Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Japan.

Watson is the former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose high-seas confrontations with whaling vessels have drawn widespread attention.

He was arrested on July 21 when his ship docked in Greenland’s capital. Japan’s coast guard sought his arrest over an encounter with a Japanese whaling research ship in 2010, when he was accused of obstructing the crew’s official duties by ordering the captain of his ship to throw explosives.

Watson is said to face up to 15 years in prison.

In a statement, the prosecution noted that Watson has appealed Wednesday’s decision by the Nuuk district court to the High Court of Greenland. One of Watson’s lawyers, Julie Stage, confirmed the appeal, adding no date had immediately been set.

“We are not satisfied with the outcome,” Stage told The Associated Press.

Omar Todd, the CEO and co-founder of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, has visited Watson in the detention center outside Nuuk. Todd told the AP on Tuesday that Watson “is doing fine. He is, I guess, getting a little bit accustomed to the life there at the moment. But he is doing well. He is determined and optimistic.”

In Paris, hundreds gathered in support of Watson. “Japan wants Paul Watson. He’s like the enemy. It would be really, just absolutely, horrible,” said Elodie Pouet, a volunteer with Sea Shepherd France.

Another member of Watson’s legal team, William Bourdon, said “it would be a stain in Denmark’s history” to extradite him and expressed concern over the “criminalization of citizen militants who stand against the impunity of those committing crimes against the environment.”

Watson, who left Sea Shepherd in 2022, was also a leading member of Greenpeace but left in 1977 amid disagreements over his aggressive tactics.

___

Philipp-Moritz Jenne in Vienna, Austria, and video journalist Alex Turnbull in Paris contributed to this report.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.