TORONTO — Ottawa police now say they decided not to pursue charges against a Minnesota man who coaxed 18-year-old Nadia Kajouji into suicide online because they believe she was not sufficiently influenced by him.

The admission was made during a briefing given to Nadia’s mother, Deborah Chevalier, by the Ottawa force’s lead investigator on the case. Chevalier taped the briefing and provided it to the Citizen.

Kajouji was a first-year Carleton University student in a deep depression in March 2008 when she met a 28-year-old “woman” — who went by the screen name “cami” — in an online suicide chat room. The two quickly formed a suicide pact, as “cami” soothed Nadia’s worries, eased her guilt and, most disturbingly, repeatedly tried to persuade her to kill herself in front of a web-cam, while she watched.

“If you wanted to do hanging we could have done it together on line so it would not have been so scary for you,” cami writes at one point. “But I think youll (sic) do fine.”

Minnesota police have identified William Melchert-Dinkel, a 47-year-old father of two, as “cami.” They are mulling charges against him in at least one case — and reportedly as many as five — under the state’s assisted suicide legislation which applies to anyone who “intentionally advises, encourages, or assists another in taking the other’s own life.”

Despite having a similar law to work with, Ottawa police have chosen not to charge Melchert-Dinkel.

Several weeks ago, Ottawa police Staff-Sgt. Uday Jaswal, the lead investigator in the Kajouji case, shared some of the reasoning behind that decision.

“We weren’t satisfied that a criminal offence had taken place,” Jaswal told Chevalier in a tense conversation in her Brampton home.

Jaswal had travelled to the Toronto area to tell Chevalier and her estranged husband, Mohamed Kajouji, some of the information he planned on releasing publicly in an interview with a CBC documentary crew.

“Obviously Nadia was in conversation with someone who is quite sick,” Jaswal is heard saying on Chevalier’s recording.

“It’s a very disturbing conversation. But given the totality of what had happened, given the totality of the evidence that we had seen in terms of her own pursuit, in terms of going to a variety of sites, looking at suicide methods, we couldn’t establish any sort of cause and effect between that conversation and her suicide.

“I wouldn’t have been comfortable going ahead with criminal charges, even if we had potentially a person that was identified,” he continued.

Asked later by the Citizen about that statement, Jaswal denied having said it. “No, I didn’t say that,” he said in a telephone interview. “I said there were some concerns. I think we need the assistance of a Crown attorney to review the case for us and to provide us with some direction.”

Nevertheless, that key rationale could reopen a debate on the handling of the case in political and legal circles. Harold Albrecht, a federal MP from Kitchener-Conestoga, was so disturbed by the police decision he has introduced a motion to Parliament seeking to clarify Canadian law.

A leading legal scholar says no such clarification is needed. David Paciocco, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, says investigators don’t need to draw a direct line between Nadia’s conversations with Melchert-Dinkel and her ensuing suicide in order to charge him with assisted suicide. Section 241 of the Canadian Criminal Code states anyone who “counsels a person to commit suicide, or aids and abets a person to commit suicide, whether suicide ensues or not, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to” as much as 14 years in jail. The key terms — counselling and abetting — both mean giving some form of encouragement.

“There’s no causality to this,” says Paciocco. “You could be convicted of counselling someone to commit suicide or aiding and abetting someone to commit suicide even if they don’t do it.”

A leading psychiatrist says he believes Melchert-Dinkel played a key role in enabling Nadia’s death, despite the fact she had already formed a suicide plan when she met him.

“You know, I think she would have done it at some point, but this maybe sped it up,” says Dr. Marshall Korenblum, chief psychiatrist at Toronto’s Hicks-Dellcrest centre, a youth psychiatric facility. “This was definitely a facilitating conversation to have.”

Korenblum, an expert in depression, reviewed the entire transcript of a lengthy conversation between Nadia and ‘cami’ three days before Nadia died. The transcript, along with another conversation, was released to Nadia’s parents by police.

“What cami is doing here, slowly over the course of the conversation, is making suicide sound acceptable, understandable, natural, OK to do,” Korenblum told the Citizen.

Korenblum says that despite Nadia’s apparent determination to commit suicide, she also shows signs of ambivalence. She asks Melchert-Dinkel at one point, for example, who he is leaving behind. That’s important, he says, because up until the very moment someone kills themselves, they are liable to change their minds. “That’s why we build barriers on bridges,” he says.

Minnesota police have expanded their investigation into Melchert-Dinkel, who in January checked himself into a Minnesota hospital claiming to be suffering from an “addiction to suicide Internet sites.”

In documents tabled at a state Board of Nursing hearing to revoke Melchert-Dinkel’s professional license, he confesses to posing as a 28-year-old woman and entering pacts he has no intention of honouring. “Respondent … feels worthless, guilty,” the report states.

Ottawa police now say they will consider changing their mind about charges.

Jaswal said “new information” — possibly that documented confession — has made that possible. But he added: “There are other pieces of information that we’re working with. There are other things we’re aware of — information that comes from the computer. So there are some other issues that need to be addressed in this case that will require further examination.”

Source Ottawa Citizen