Judge denies request to prevent 2 men convicted of Laval murder from communicating with each other in prison

Montreal Gazette

09-05-2025

Montreal Crime
By
A man alleged to be the leader behind a violent gang and his accomplice in a murder carried out in Laval nearly four years ago will be allowed to communicate with each other while they serve the life sentences they recently received for the homicide.
On Friday, Quebec Superior Court Justice Michel Pennou ruled the prosecution did not present enough evidence to justify its request for a court order that Sylvain Kabbouchi, 26, the alleged leader of a gang called Arab Power, and Tarek Youssef Baydoun, 29, not be allowed to communicate with each other for the rest of their lives.
On April 11, a jury who heard a trial at the Gouin courthouse in northern Montreal convicted both men of the first-degree murder of Nitchell Lapaix, a man who had ties to a Montreal street gang leader. On Aug. 16, 2021, Lapaix was apparently ambushed after he left the Crazy Horse strip club in Laval. During the trial, the jury heard evidence that Lapaix was shot at close range and that the gunmen fired off 17 shots, with at least a few bullets hitting the exterior of a house across the street from where Lapaix's body was found.
On April 14, Pennou made the automatic sentences both men received official: life with no chance at full parole until they have served 25 years behind bars. While the case was in the sentencing stage, the Crown took the unusual step of asking that Kabbouchi and Baydoun not be allowed to communicate with each other while they serve their life sentences.
The request was based on a section of the Criminal Code, but Marc Labelle and Anne-Sophie Bédard, lawyers for both men, argued it is up to Correctional Service Canada to decide whether communication between the men represents a danger to society.
To support the prosecution's position, prosecutor Karine Cordeau noted on Friday that both men are currently not allowed to communicate with each other because they are charged at a courthouse in Waterloo, Ont. with an attempted murder. In that case, the men are alleged to have driven from Montreal to Kitchener in a stolen Mercedes to shoot a man on Aug. 21, 2021, just five days after Lapaix was killed. They are only allowed to communicate with each other in the presence of their defence lawyers in the Ontario case.
Kabbouchi is also currently charged along with four other men with the attempted murder of a fellow detainee at the Rivière-des-Prairies Detention Centre on Jan. 9, 2023, and he is charged with being part of a conspiracy to murder someone while he was behind bars.
'Orders like this have been issued in the past and they have created situations that are unmanageable,' Labelle argued. 'Why would a Superior Court judge occupy themselves with this?'
Cordeau argued that during the murder trial, the jury heard evidence that Kabbouchi and Baydoun were able to plan other alleged crimes while they were detained as suspects in Lapaix's murder.
'They are able to bring telephones into (jails),' Cordeau said, adding provincial officials have also alleged the two men arranged to have drugs brought inside a jail. 'Also, you had access to their (jail) records, which indicate that they were involved in an assault inside a jail. You have two individuals who are stronger when they are together and they put public security in peril, not just the security of people outside the walls (of a penitentiary) but the guards who manage the sentences.'
Pennou ruled that while judges have issued similar orders in the past, 'in this context the evidence is not sufficient.'
'There were certain types of conversations intercepted when the individuals were detained in provincial jails that raised concerns,' the judge said, adding the evidence presented to him lacked 'something more specific that would raise more serious concerns.'