COP'S WIDOW IRATE OVER DRUG DEALER'S 'SIDESHOW'

Alain Olivier Claims He Was Entrapped By Police And Deserves
$47 Million

Metro Vancouver resident Fiona Flanagan is spitting mad.

Nineteen years after her Mountie husband Derek was killed on the job
in Thailand, the painful case is being dredged up again by an admitted
heroin importer who was targeted by police in an international
smuggling probe.

In recent days, Alain Olivier has been making the media rounds in B.C.
claiming he deserves $47 million in compensation from the RCMP after
they "entrapped" him in an elaborate undercover operation in which
Derek Flanagan died accidentally.

But in January, a Quebec Superior Court judge found that Olivier had
no credibility and that his own calm, collected voice on police
wiretaps undermined his claim that he was intimidated by undercover
officers into participating in the 1989 plot to import heroin from
Bangkok.

Olivier's appeal in the civil case, which names a number of B.C. RCMP
officers both active and retired, will be heard today before three
justices in Montreal, where the ex-con now lives.

Flanagan is confident the appeal will be thrown out, just like the
original civil case. But she is still furious that Olivier -- a former
Gibsons resident who ended up spending eight years in a Thai jail --
is spinning his discredited version of the tragic events that left her
a widow with two small sons.

"I am angry and I am frustrated," Flanagan said Sunday. "Why do we as
a family have to defend actions that the court has said were entirely
within the context of Derek's job? Why are we defending his name 19
years later against someone that the courts have deemed is not
credible? It is not fair."

Olivier claims he was just a small-town heroin addict living on the
Sunshine Coast when RCMP officers posing as drug dealers mistook him
for his criminal twin and pushed him into a deal to procure five kilos
of pure heroin.

While the RCMP admitted they wrongly believed Olivier had a criminal
record that belonged to his brother, they said it was in fact Olivier
who boasted for months that he had the contacts to arrange and smuggle
several kilos of Thai heroin.

"Olivier was not a major importer, as he was identified by the RCMP,
but he did not hesitate on at least two occasions (in 1987 and 1988)
to import a small amount of heroin into Canada," Judge Michel Caron
said in his recent ruling.

"The Court accepts that the motivation of the police officers was the
search for a source and since Olivier said openly that he was able to
make contact with a source in Thailand to purchase five kilos of
heroin, the interest in targeting Olivier was genuine."

For 18 months before Olivier went to Thailand to close the deal in
February 1989, he had regular contact with the undercover officers.

The police successfully argued during the trial last fall that it was
Olivier who kept calling them back, insisting he was the right guy for
the job even when the covert RCMP operators had moved on to other targets.

The arrangements were made and Olivier travelled ahead of the
Mounties, including Cpl. Derek Flanagan, to Bangkok. The deal was
almost complete. Flanagan was on the back of a pickup with Olivier's
contacts testing the heroin when a scuffle ensued and the 35-year-old
Mountie fell from the vehicle, breaking his neck and dying instantly.

Thai police moved in and arrested their nationals, as well as Olivier,
who pleaded guilty to the drug charges and was sentenced to life in
prison. He was returned to Canada in 1997 and remains on parole.

In 2000, he launched a massive lawsuit against the RCMP and the
federal Attorney-General, complaining that he never would have been
mixed up in the deal if police hadn't pushed him into it.

But Fiona Flanagan said that just like in 1989, Olivier is motivated
by greed, wanting to cash in on events that arose out of his own drug
use and willingness to become a big-time trafficker.

"For the last eight years since this suit was launched, we have been
basically quiet," Flanagan said. "Because he lost in court, he is
going around doing this travelling sideshow."

Chris Flanagan hopes to follow his dad into the RCMP. Now living in
Saskatchewan with a new baby, the 23-year-old said Sunday that it has
been hard to witness the public dissemination of Olivier's distorted
version of his family's tragedy.

"It is frustrating. It has been 19 years and it is still going on and
you just want closure," he said.