Witness at Toronto gold heist trial says snitching is never ‘a positive thing’ but his sudden memory loss isn’t out of fear

The star witness at the Toronto airport gold heist trial — who admitted to being a mastermind of one of the biggest gold heists in history — said several times that he didn’t have an opinion on snitching, but it turned out he really did.

After days of court testimony marked by low-energy, little memory, and complaints of “feeling triggered” by questions, Arsalan Chaudhary was asked if his reticence was more about prison culture than mental health.

“It’s hard giving evidence against someone when you yourself are in custody,” Crown prosecutor Jelena Vlacic asked him.

“I have no opinion,” Chaudhary replied.

“It’s challenging to snitch against someone, particularly when you’re in custody,” she asked again.

“I have no comment, ma’am.”

Vlacic reminded him that when he was previously testifying as a prelude to his own guilty plea — during which he gave detailed testimony — he asked in court if there were “any newspapers here,” and was told there weren’t. “You were concerned about the media attention,” Vlacic said, before noting that reporters were in court in Brampton, Ont., this time.

He agreed he was snitching but on Simran Preet Panesar, one of the co-accused in the heist who is considered a fugitive and living in India, but not against the accused currently on trial, Parmpal Sidhu. Vlacic suggested it was easier to snitch against someone who isn’t in the country.

Chaudhary became more animated, his voice clearer and louder, his replies much longer.

“When you’re in jail and when you snitch on somebody, it doesn’t matter where they are. If snitching is a snitch, it doesn’t make a difference,” he said. “People in jail, they don’t look at one snitch compared to another snitch any differently. So it doesn’t matter if I’m snitching on somebody who’s out of the country or someone who’s in the country. It doesn’t make a big difference in jail.”

“I guess you do have some opinion on it, then, right?” Vlacic said. She asked him if snitching was a positive thing in prison.

“I don’t think so, ma’am. It’s never been a positive thing anywhere.”

Before that exchange Monday, Chaudhary presented as someone with little energy or affect. He asked the court to let him recuperate more from his trauma before testifying more about who did what in the plot, even though the court had just given him a five-day break to recover.

“I’m feeling triggered,” Chaudhary said when asked for details about the gold heist. “It just takes me to a place where it makes me very uncomfortable,” he said. “I’m just getting triggered by everything, and kind of nerve shaking, bringing me back memories.”

Chaudhary, 43, of Mississauga, Ont., has pleaded guilty to theft for the 2023 heist, when a crate containing more than $22.5 million worth of almost pure gold and cash was stolen from the Air Canada cargo warehouse at Pearson airport soon after arriving on an Air Canada flight from Zurich, Switzerland. He is serving a four-year sentence.

He was a reluctant witness, ordered by a judge to be brought from his cell and into court to take the stand at Sidhu’s trial.

He admitted that he was one of two masterminds who planned and orchestrated the astonishing gold heist. The other, he said, was the inside man at Air Canada, Panesar, who was a manager in the cargo facility and came up with the plan.

Chaudhary started testifying last week and easily recalled details of his harrowing attempt to flee to his native Pakistan, where he said he was kidnapped by Pakistani police who tortured him into giving up all his loot. When he was asked by Vlacic about the others who helped him pull off the heist, his memory evaporated.

After two days of him telling court he couldn’t remember, and that post-traumatic stress from his kidnapping and poor treatment in prison diminished his memory and state of mind, Judge Gordon Cudjoe of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Brampton ordered last Wednesday that Chaudhary be returned to his federal prison where he could take his medication and catch up on sleep before returning to the stand.

His testimony Monday reconvened with little apparent change of heart or state of mind.

“I don’t remember, ma’am,” was a frequent response.

After being shown his previous sworn testimony, the transcript of his guilty plea hearing, an agreed statement of fact he and his lawyer agreed to in court, and copies of text messages extracted from a phone police seized from his apartment, he still couldn’t recall much of it.

He asked the judge to let him speak to his lawyer. He said reading the transcript “will hurt me mentally.”

She asked him about text messages about melting gold after the heist that were extracted from a phone police seized in his condo. He repeatedly said he didn’t recognize the messages, didn’t know what they meant, and couldn’t say who sent them. He didn’t recognize the phone or remember his phone number.

He said he didn’t recognize who was in photos he was shown, including himself, and didn’t recognize what the Crown suggested was his Range Rover.

He testified with a scowl on his face and occasionally rubbing his head with both hands.

Eventually, Vlacic asked Cudjoe for permission to treat Chaudhary as an adversarial witness so she could more directly challenge his answers, which was granted.

Chaudhary said he communicated with Sidhu but had only vague recollection of what was said. Mainly it was about him passing messages to Panesar, Chaudhary said. He previously said he spoke with Sidhu three times on the day of the heist, but on Monday he wasn’t so sure.

Chaudhary said he and Panesar agreed to split the gold, with Panesar getting 70 per cent and Chaudhary getting 30 per cent. He previously said he needed to take care of others he had used in the plot and Panesar was going to do the same, but in court he didn’t know whether Panesar did that or who he might have shared it with.

In previous testimony he agreed he exchanged text messages with Sidhu including receiving a message asking: “you manage to melt down all that gold yet lol.”

“Theres too much heat right now,” was the reply. “We’re gonna have to wait now. Melt gold is a process lol,”

“I heard they call you 2 chains of tdot,” Sidhu allegedly texted, using a slang term for Toronto.

“I wish I had it. Love to be called 2 chains lol.”

He said in court Monday he doesn’t remember the exchange, but he recalls hearing about the “2 chains” joke.

“I’ve read this in the newspaper many times,” he testified. “That 2 chain line, everybody talked about it in jail.”

He also said the prosecutors overestimated his intelligence.

“I haven’t finished my high school. I’m trying to do that thing right now, actually, so I don’t know how smart you think I am,” he said when he claimed he didn’t know what the word “delegated” meant.

He said he was born in Pakistan and moved to the United States when he was very young and then came to Canada when he was around 12 and became a citizen. He grew up speaking English, he said, but still didn’t know the word the prosecutor used.

Vlacic eventually got him to agree that the things he agreed to at his own court hearing for his guilty plea were “probably, mostly” said because he believed them to be true at the time. “I’m not saying it’s not true.”

Under cross-examination by Sidhu’s lawyer, Shale Wagman, Chaudhary said he doesn’t know how much Sidhu would have known about the heist plans, and that for Chaudhary he was primarily a conduit to reach Panesar.

Chaudhary agreed that he never saw Sidhu at his condo or at his second condo he used as a stash house, and he had no financial dealings with Sidhu.

The trial continues.

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