Breach charged dropped against Hulgaard long after penalties would have expired
By MEDICINE HAT NEWS on November 1, 2023.
https://www.medicinehatnews.com@MedicineHatNews Charges that a man who pleaded guilty to promoting racial hatred broke his probation have been withdrawn after more than two years of legal proceedings in Medicine Hat. Loki Holger Hulgaard, 40, was sentenced in late 2020 to the charge, but later unsuccessfully challenged his guilty plea and then was subsequently charged with failing to remove online material related to the case. That, said prosecutors, constituted a breach of a Court of King’s bench order, but the charge was withdrawn on Oct. 26 without commentary or explanation by specialized Crown prosecutors. Defence attorney Greg White was assigned to the case through legal aid after Hulgaard dismissed two other attorneys over the course of 18 months, twice delaying trials on the breach charge, which are typically resolved in several months. White told the News he had no insight into the Crown’s decision. However, the length of the proceedings had gone on much longer than the potential penalties had his client been found guilty. That includes a curfew that would have expired in late 2021, but had continued while the breach charge was pursued. White also felt the Crown would have faced “significant hurdles” linking his client to online postings that formed the Crown’s case. Hulgaard was originally charged in 2018 after he passed currency to a grocery store cashier on the Southeast Hill stamped with anti-semitic statements alluding to Zionist plots at world domination. Police also discovered firearms and ammunition at his residence, including several registered under a previous name and another with serial number defaced. He also pleaded guilty to one non-criminal offence of failing to register his weapons under his current name, and was barred from possessing firearms for three years in 2020. On the charge of wilfully promoting hatred, Hulgaard was ordered to spend four months under house arrest, then a further eight months of curfew while undergoing therapy and socialization training during a two-year term of probation. As well, he was to remove online “manifestos” that described Hulgaard’s belief in the need to separate races, and explorations of “white genocide” – a anti-immigration theory. Medicine Hat probation officers laid the charge of breaching a court-ordered condition in the summer of 2021 when they said they found a substantial amount of hate literature at his home and online that, according to the complaint, they linked to him. 16-15
