SUIT AGAINST RCMP INCREASED TO $47.4 MILLION

Man Spent Eight Years in Thai Prison. Recovered Drug Addict Claims Mounties
Forced Him into Heroin Plot Overseas

A Montreal man who claims he was entrapped in a botched RCMP sting
operation to buy drugs in Thailand has boosted his damage suit to $47.4
million.

Lawyers for Alain Olivier yesterday amended their original claim against
the attorney-general of Canada and undercover members of the RCMP after
examining 7,000 documents and questioning six RCMP officers.

Lawyers Reevin Pearl and Francois Audet said the documents show senior RCMP
officers who approved the undercover operation that lured Olivier into help
buy heroin in Thailand from July 1987 to February 1989 showed no concern
they were putting him in danger of a death sentence if he were arrested.

The documents also indicate the RCMP confused Oliver, 44, a recovered
heroin user who had no criminal record before the Thailand trip, with his
twin brother, Serge, who had an extensive record.

Olivier returned to Canada after eight years sleeping on a concrete floor
and in chains in a Bangkok jail. The operation, code-named Deception, took
a tragic turn when undercover RCMP Cpl. Derek Flanagan died during an
aborted drug buy in Chiang Mai. Olivier was subsequently arrested and jailed.

He received a death sentence that was commuted by royal pardon to life
imprisonment on a plea bargain, before being returned here under a prisoner
exchange treaty in July 1997.

He was released on parole in 1998.

The documents and statements in discovery indicate "a wilful and
intentional breach of fundamental human rights," Pearl charged.

In the deposition of former chief superintendent Frank Palmer, at the time
one of the senior Mounties in Vancouver who approved the operation, Palmer
was asked:

"It didn't bother you about bringing a Canadian citizen to be arrested in
Thailand for a crime you knew carried the death penalty. That didn't bother
you at all?"

"No," was the reply. Palmer retired in 1997 with the rank of deputy
commissioner.

The suit charged Palmer "knew or should have known promising someone a half
kilo of heroin with a street value of approximately $3 million is illegal
and constitutes entrapment under Canadian law as well as being forbidden by
the manual of operations of the RCMP."

The suit also alleges undercover agents repeatedly threatened to kill
Olivier unless he co-operated in setting up the Thai drug deal.

Pearl said he hopes the case will be heard in court in six to 12 months.