Lawyers look for crack video

While the circus-like atmosphere continues inside City Hall, the Rob Ford saga spilled over into a much more staid, and formal venue earlier Friday.

Scot Urquhart has the details of the latest court proceedings stemming from a police, drugs and weapons investigation that apparently uncovered the mayor’s infamous “crack video”.

Lawyers for Mohammed Khattak, were in court Friday morning, arguing for the release of that video in order to “clear” their client.

The problem apparently stems from this infamous photo, taken outside of 15 Windsor Road, the address at the centre of the police investigation. In it, Mohammed Khattak can be seen with Ford, Anthony Smith, identified as a drug dealer who was later shot and killed, and a third man, who is also at the centre of the police investigation.

The address has been suggested as the likely location in which the video of the Mayor, supposedly smoking crack was first taken. The photograph and the video have been linked by association. But lawyers for the defence say, that’s unfair to their client because he never appears in the video. Something that the crown, concedes.

Daniel Brown is the defence lawyer: “Every story that’s ever been written about this video has our client standing side by side with the Mayor. Those two events have nothing to do with eachother. We want to take today to show that these two events have nothing to do with eachother. The sooner he can be disassociated from this video, the easier it will be to get that fair trial.”

Now Khattak has no previous criminal record, but he is one of the subjects being investigated by Toronto police in connection with their drugs and weapons case. The defence wants the video released to the public, to show that their client is not in the room at any time, with Ford. The irony here is obvious, a suspected drug dealer now trying to disassociate himself from the Mayor of Toronto because his lawyers are concerned, that it might actually hurt their case!