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The libel trial of free speech crusader Ezra Levant began in a Toronto courtroom Monday with blunt questions and cautiously indignant answers from the alleged victim.

“Sir, are you a bigot?” asked lawyer Brian Shiller of his client, Khurrum Awan.

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“Absolutely not,” replied Mr. Awan, a Saskatchewan lawyer who filed the $100,000 defamation claim against Mr. Levant, the frequently controversial Sun News television host.

Sir, are you a bigot?

“Are you a radical Islamist?” Mr. Shiller went on. Mr. Awan denied it, and also that he has ever made anti-Semitic comments, or extorted media companies for bribes like a “Junior Al Sharpton,” or consorted with “Jew haters, terrorist lovers and nuisance litigants,” as part of a “soft jihad of lawfare,” in which Canada’s own laws were turned against the freedoms of its citizens.

“It’s very upsetting,” Mr. Awan said, to be accused of all this by a prominent pundit. Seeing these claims on Mr. Levant’s blog nearly seven years ago, when he was an articling student, he felt it “went right to my credibility as a lawyer or a lawyer to be.” He said he did not sue until a year later because he had a lot of student debt and had just been married.