MONTREAL -- The trial of Nigel Barry Hamer, charged in the 1970 terrorist kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross, has been delayed until Monday.
Hamer's trial was scheduled to begin Friday, but the British-born engineering teacher appeared without a lawyer to request his trial be postponed.
Chief Sessions Court Judge Yves Mayrand denied the request and ordered Hamer to appear later Friday accompanied by his lawyer, Normand Marion.
When Marion was again absent, Mayrand granted a delayto Monday, saying he hoped the weekend would allow sufficient time for the defense to regulate its affairs.
It was speculated Marion's failure to appear was due to a strike by Quebec's private lawyers who were protesting pay scales for criminal cases handled under the province's legal aid plan.
The lawyers were refusing to plead non-urgent cases Thursday and Friday.
Hamer, arrested in July, was the first to plead not guilty among the four persons so far charged with conspiracy, kidnapping, forcible detention and extortion in the Oct. 5, 1970 abduction of Cross.
Jacques and Louise Cossette Trudel and Jacques Lanctot pleaded guilty when they returned to Canada in 1978 after living in an eight-year voluntary exile in France and Cuba.
Two other suspects wanted for the 59-day kidnapping that triggered the 'October Crisis' and subsequent invocation of the War Measures Act, remain in France.
Hamer was suspected by police to be the mysterious sixth person involved in the Cross kidnapping.
His name did not surface publicly, however, until 1977 during hearings of a semi-judicial commission, chaired by lawyer Jean Keable, into police activities at the time of the crisis.
