An Algerian-born graduate student at Université du Québec à Montréal said he was severely roughed up March 16 by Montreal police investigating a suspected suicide bomber.
Slimane Zahaf said in a statement that he was “targeted because of colour and origin” by UQAM campus security and subsequently by Montreal police. However, the police’s version of events is quite different.
Zahaf was stopped by UQAM security guards in the afternoon of March 16, said Anie Lemieux, Montreal Police Service spokesperson. The guards were acting on a tip that “a man seemed to have explosives on him,” and originally thought Zahaf fit that description, Lemieux said.
Zahaf “was released right away when they found out he was the wrong person,” Lemieux said. “It actually went relatively well.”
However, in a French statement posted on the Montreal Gazette website and translated by a Charlatan reporter and Carleton University French professor, Zahaf said he was pushed down a flight of stairs by four Montreal police officers. The officers “jumped on me, bringing me to the ground with their knees on my face, knees or feet on my back, even though I was saying, ‘Be careful, I’ve had an operation on my back.’”
“I was in front of them with my jacket open, and I visibly had nothing on me, and they continued to harass me,” Zahaf wrote.
“They didn’t pay any attention,” Zahaf wrote. “On the contrary they crushed me more, and [I had] my face on the ground in front of everyone.”
Zahaf maintained that he had come to UQAM on March 16 to pay his tuition fees, when security guards approached him and asked him to prove his student status. The guards then called police, Zahaf wrote. He wrote that he put up no resistance when they searched him, but was still treated with “excessive force,” handcuffed and put under arrest without a clear explanation, knowing only “that they were looking for a man in a black jacket.”
Lemieux said Zahaf was never put under arrest. She said at one point Zahaf “made a move that led officers to believe he was resisting” which led them to restrain him.
She would not comment on Zahaf’s statement and said she was unaware the Gazette had printed it.
Zahaf wrote that during the altercation an officer “put a lot of weight exactly on the spot” where he had had a back operation, causing intense pains in his right leg and back. He asked the officers to call an ambulance and was subsequently taken to hospital, he wrote.
“I was targeted because of my colour and my origin, because several white men . . . had passed [the guards] wearing black jackets and the security guards did not question them,” he wrote. “I am a victim of profiling.”
Zahaf wrote that he now suffers great pain when he walks, must see a psychologist and has trouble falling asleep.
UQAM’s media relations office could not be reached for comment.
Francine Jacques, head of media relations at UQAM, told the National Post Zahaf had refused five times to show his student ID to security guards before the incident.