POLICE RAID ENDANGERED LIVES: DEALER Arms dealer John St. Amour says a March 13 police raid on his business imperiled the lives of him, his wife and employees. "They were ready to shoot us," St. Amour says of the about 40 heavily-armed police who raided his Marstar Trading International business on Pleasant Corners Road. St. Amour says his firm has followed the letter of the law since it was established ten years ago. He says he still does not know what the police were looking for. A search warrant obtained by Canada Customs alleges that Marstar made a false statement to obtain an export permit. But St. Amour says he has done nothing wrong and has cooperated with authorities. He scoffs at media reports that suggest that 600 guns Marstar sold to a Norwegian arms trader disappeared and were subsequently smuggled to third parties as part of an illegal international arms network. People who might think he sells arms to mercenaries, terrorists and private armies "have been watching too many movies," he insists. St. Amour describes his operation as a law-abiding, up-front mail-order business that sells military surplus rifles and handguns. He calls the military arms "collector's items." The bulk of the guns he sells are in the "deactivated" class, meaning they are bought as decorative items, St. Amour says. "Weapons don't just disappear. For every pound of gun of gun we sell, there is a pound of paperwork. There is a pound of paperwork. There is a paper trail that a blind man can follow at night," he states. The police action was excessive and subsequent media coverage has made his business a target of thieves, St. Amour says. "Somebody should be held accountable. There certainly must be some violation of rights here. Nobody can make me believe that police should hold people at gunpoint and make threats, trash the place and refuse to say why they are doing this," St. Amour says. "I worked in Easter European countries before the fall of Communist governments and I've never seen anything like this. I want to know why is this happening in Canada? I have some serious questions. What kind of country are we living in? Somebody has to be held accountable for this type of excessive action," he states. "We have no secrets. Our company enjoys one of the best reputations in the world. For ten years we have been a fully- licensed, fully-documented business that has been fully supported by all levels of government. We are audited by the O.P.P.. They didn't need machine guns and a SWAT team to look at my files. I kept saying, "Tell me what you want; I'll give it to you." They said it was none of my business. They refused to identify themselves and said that I could be arrested because my questions were interfering with their investigation. They still haven't told what they were looking for," he declares. St. Amour says that he, his wife and two employees were working inside Marstar's building when the raid began. Accompanied by an Ontario Provincial Police helicopter, officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada Customs and the O.P.P SWAT team descended on the business at 1:30 p.m. and left at 8:15 p.m. Some of the officers were armed with submachine guns and grenades. The unit had earlier arrived at the Hawkesbury O.P.P. detachment. "One of the staff sergeants there said, "Why don't you just go ring the doorbell?" Local O.P.P. officers come here all the time. They don't seem threatened when they come here St. Amour says. "The local O.P.P. officer rang, I opened the door and he said there were a whole bunch more outside. They were ready for anything. They had flash and stun grenades, battering rams, submachine guns, shotguns, handguns. The O.P.P. SWAT team and the RCMP were to "secure" the premises and perimeters," St. Amour relates. When the police saw the St. Amours' two dogs, they were told, "Control them or they're gone," he says. A Revenue Canada spokesman was quoted in published reports as saying that the size of the raid was necessary to ensure the safety of police personnel. "Thirty five to 40 heavily armed police with a helicopter, and there were four of us here. I think it was adequate," St. Amour says dryly. At gunpoint, St. Amour was ordered to take the police to the office upstairs, where his wife was surrounded by four officers armed with machine guns. "My two employees were lined up against a wall and held at gunpoint. All these weapons are fully loaded, fully cocked, with the safetys off. They were ready to shoot," St. Amour relates. During the search, St. Amour says RCMP officers threatened him with physical violence when he started photographing them. "Take our picture and we'll get you," an RCMP officer warned, says St. Amour. While the search warrant bore the name of a Customs Canada official, most of the officers bore no pieces of identification. Some were dressed in plain clothes. "They refused to identify themselves. They threatened to arrest me for asking questions. "We're the RCMP, we don't have to explain anything. We don't need a warrant." They threatened me with arrest when I said I wanted to call my lawyer. I called my lawyer anyway. My lawyer said, "Ask them what they want and give it to them." I wanted to but they wouldn't tell me what they wanted." "Once the unit had "secured" the building, with the helicopter patrolling the property, they were to "take" the house," St. Amour recounts. "I told them I would open the door -- you don't have to break it down." Three SWAT team members followed St. Amour as he went from the building to the house. "These guys were wearing dark glasses. The glasses would protect them if they had to use the flash grenades which are meant to blind people temporarily. The yard is full of ice and snow, and these guys are walking through my garage with submachine guns aimed at my back. This was a very dangerous procedure. If one of them had slipped I could have been shot," says St. Amour. "They trashed the place," St. Amour said Monday, presenting photos of his ransacked office and home. "They even went through our bedroom. It took us an hour to clean up before we could go to bed that night." Police seized files computer diskettes, phone bills and faxes from the office and several personal effects from his home. Reading through a list of receipts for confiscated items, he notes a phone list, 50 travel pictures, a National Geographic map of Egypt, airline tags and stamps from Eastern European countries, papers written in foreign languages, and "pictures of weapons in possible foreign locations." Median coverage has prompted calls o support from friends but St. Amour notes he doesn't need the notoriety. "It endangers our lives. The Ottawa Sum published a picture of our house and our address. That is an invitation to thieves. Three Canadian dealers have been killed and one has been wounded during recent robberies," he says. After reading Norwegian and Ottawa newspaper reports, St. Amour says he suspects the raid was connected to arms he sent to Norway in April, 1991. St. Amour sent a "very large" shipment of World War I and World War II rifles and 1950 handguns to Tom Holgar, owner of WGG of Bergen, Norway. Holgar committed suicide 18 months ago. "Tom's suicide was related to a tragic personal family matter, it had nothing to do with the business," St. Amour says. "That's a crock," he says of speculation that WBG, which stands for wince, brandy and guns, was involved in illicit arms trading. "Tom set up his business in a former nuclear fallout shelter that was rented from the Norwegian ministry of defence," St. Amour says. Producing a permit for the shipment, he recalls a discrepancy in the paperwork was detected before the guns left Mirabel Airport. The arms were "collectors-orientated stuff," says St. Amour. The cargo included World War II rifles made in Canada, Russia, Belgium, Japan, Italy and Yugoslavia, as well as some World War I rifle. "Because it was such a large shipment, we redid the paperwork at Mirabel under the supervision of Customs officers. Tom was there. Some cases had been counted twice. So we sorted out the paperwork with the customs people," St. Amour says. ------------------------------------------------------------- This article by Richard Mahoney was a front page story in the March 22, 1995 issue of Vankleek Hill's paper _The_Review_. The editor has given permission for the electronic distribution of the article.