Nov 25, 2008 - 03:20 PM

By Jeff Mitchell

WHITBY -- The trial of two bikers accused by a police agent of plotting to commit murder has been rocked by the revelation that one of the men on trial is himself a police informant.

Witness Steven Gault reacted with disbelief when defence lawyer Glen Orr dropped the bombshell that Cobourg-area resident Remond Akleh, one of the men on trial, had signed on to provide information to police -- about Mr. Gault.

"You've got to be kidding," said Mr. Gault, who admitted on the stand later the information had taken him totally by surprise.

The development is an astonishing twist in the case against Mr. Akleh and Mark Stephenson, two high-ranking Hells Angels accused of conspiring with Mr. Gault, a fellow Angel in the Oshawa chapter, to assassinate a rival biker with ties to the Bandidos gang. Mr. Gault has testified he was a police agent gathering information on drug dealing among bikers when the two men approached him with the plot in June 2006.

Mr. Akleh and Mr. Stephenson have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and counselling to commit murder.

Defence lawyers Mr. Orr, representing Mr. Akleh, and Brian Grys for Mr. Stephenson have subjected Mr. Gault to several days of withering cross-examination, putting before the jury Mr. Gault's criminal record of violence and fraud and suggesting his motive in implicating the two men now on trial was revenge for past differences.

Jurors have heard in detail about the events of 2003, when Mr. Akleh, armed with information provided by Mr. Gault's ex-wife, accused Mr. Gault of being a police informant. The matter was a source of animosity that led Mr. Gault to demand Mr. Akleh be thrown out of the Hells Angels.

The matter went to an arbitration tribunal -- at which Mr. Stephenson, president of the Oshawa Hells Angels, spoke on Mr. Gault's behalf -- and ended with Mr. Gault being exonerated. Mr. Akleh, meantime, wound up with a gun to his head as a warning and soon left the Oshawa chapter for the Angels' elite Nomads wing, jurors heard.

It was after a number of run-ins with Mr. Gault that Mr. Akleh began providing information to a Durham cop in the biker enforcement branch, court heard. The officer with whom Mr. Akleh dealt was the same cop Mr. Gault was convicted of uttering threats toward in 2002, after a traffic stop in Oshawa.

The trial, presided over by Superior Court Justice Bruce Glass in Whitby, continues.