In a June 2022 decision by Quebec’s provincial rental court, the diplomat was ordered to pay more than $45,000, plus interest, to a landlord who claimed his home in the Aylmer sector of Gatineau was damaged during the diplomat’s stay there .
Court database information obtained by Radio-Canada also indicates that a “notice of execution” was filed in the case on July 29, followed by a notice of “entry into a place” on August 2 — the same day it took place the dispute between Gatineau police officers and the diplomat of the Embassy of Senegal, who was working from home.
Last week, The government of Senegal issued a statement claiming that “Canadian police subjected the diplomat to humiliating physical and moral violence in front of witnesses and in the presence of her minor children.”
When reached by CBC News at the embassy in Ottawa on Monday, Senegal’s ambassador to Ottawa, Viviane Laure Elisabeth Bampassy, declined to comment on the incident while an investigation is underway.
In his own version of events, the Gatineau Police Service said officers were escorting a bailiff who was serving a warrant. Police arrested an aggressive person after one officer was punched and a second officer was bitten while the person resisted arrest, according to this account.
Quebec’s Ministry of Public Security said the province’s police are investigating the officers’ actions and that the police complaint against the detainee has been withdrawn “due to applicable diplomatic immunity.”
The incident involved the First Counselor of the Senegalese Embassy in Ottawa, the ministry added.
The list of individuals from Senegal accredited to Global Affairs Canada includes only one female First Counselor. The same person is named in the court order and in a later filing indicating the August 2 visit.
CBC News is not naming her because she could not be reached to respond to the allegations.
Owner reported water, mold issues
It remains unclear what else may have happened in the two months between the provincial rental court’s decision to fine the diplomat and the bailiff’s visit to her home last Tuesday — or what exactly the bailiff did at the house last week. But in a June 2 ruling, an administrative court judge outlined the rent dispute between the diplomat and her landlord, after a hearing on April 26 the diplomat reportedly did not attend. According to the decision, the diplomat rented the house from November 2018 to October 2020. In the summer of 2019, the landlord found the basement soaked and mold on the walls, and learned of other unspecified issues later that year when the diplomat’s wife allegedly refused to let the landlord inspect the rooms and called the police, according to decision. “The landlord [left] the facilities so that the situation does not degenerate,” the administrative judge wrote. The owner was eventually awarded compensation, including the costs of replacing the furniture, repair work on the house and cleaning the house, as well as “moral damages”. “The landlord has satisfied the court that all of the risks faced by the tenant exceed the foreseeable risks and normal conditions of owning a building for rental purposes,” according to the decision.
4 guardian investigators were appointed
In its release on last week’s altercation, the Gatineau Police Service said the person who allegedly assaulted an officer “went to the ground to submit [and] he was held in the back of the patrol car under police supervision until the bailiff executed his order and the situation was calm again.” The Senegalese government called the police intervention a “racist and barbaric act” and a violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. In a statement over the weekend, Global Affairs Canada said it was “extremely concerned” about the diplomat’s alleged treatment, calling the incident “simply unacceptable.” On Monday, Quebec’s law enforcement agency, the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI), confirmed it has assigned four investigators to the case. None of those people are former Gatineau Police Service officers, a spokesman said. “The aim of the investigation is to determine the exact sequence of events as accurately as possible,” the spokesman said. “Upon completion of the investigation, the file will be transferred to the directeur des poursuits criminelles et pénales, whose role and prerogative is to determine whether charges should be brought against the officers involved.”