Mamadi Fara Camara says false arrest made him feel like “I was a monster”

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A civil suit could be in the offing in the case of Mamadi Fara Camara, the Black doctoral student wrongfully arrested and detained for six days on a charge he assaulted a Montreal police officer, his lawyer said Sunday night on the popular Radio-Canada TV program Tout le monde en parle.

Virginie Dufresne Lemire specializes in cases of abuse of authority such as policy brutality and sexual assault.

Camara, 31, was arrested on Jan. 28 after his car was pulled over by Montreal police officer Sanjay Vig on Crémazie Blvd. W. — he was given a $500 ticket for using a cell phone while driving — and alleged to have disarmed Vig and fired at him. Among charges against him was using a firearm in an attempted murder.

He was released Feb. 3 when new evidence, mainly highway surveillance footage that showed a third person at the scene, led to Quebec’s office of criminal prosecutions (DPCP) staying the charges. Two days later, police Chief Sylvain Caron apologized publicly to Camara and again to his family, saying police had received DNA analysis results that day eliminating him as a possible suspect.

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His family accepted Caron’s apology, Camara said, and “it was a relief, but there are many questions I am asking myself.

“It was a very traumatizing episode.”

Moments after ticketing Camara, Vig was viciously attacked from behind as he returned to his patrol car. His gun, taken from him in the process, has not been found.

Camara said Sunday he never left his vehicle.

As Dufresne Lemire explained it, Camara saw an altercation between Vig and someone else, saw the suspect flee — and called 911. A police officer approached him, spoke to him briefly and said he could leave. But Camara did not even have the time to get to his apartment.

“He leaves to go home and the street is already blocked,” said Dufresne Lemire. “The police are already looking for his car.”
Police seized Camara by the shoulders and pulled him through his car window onto the ground, she said, and an officer put his foot on Camara’s head.

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Police ordered everyone out of Camara’s apartment onto a bus in front and ransacked the place, said documentary filmmaker and activist Will Prosper, who also appeared on Tout le monde en parle. Small children sitting on the bus for four hours peed on themselves, he said.

Camara, meanwhile was interrogated by police for four and a half hours and then arrested. Arriving at the Rivière-des-Prairies detention centre, he felt as if “I was a monster,” he said.

It was “a big relief” to be freed after six days, he said, “but I did, from the day of my arrest, proclaim my innocence.” He had no opportunity to speak to family during that time, he said.

Dufresne Lemire said there were errors of fact in the version of events provided by police to the media.

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“The testimony of the wounded officer became the story,” she said. No attempt was made to look at “facts or absence of facts,” she said.

The question of race and racial profiling “played a role in the evolution of the dossier,” said Dufresne Lemire, and, clearly, “elements are missing” from the file with which the DPCP worked. “We need the file of what the DPCP had,” she said.

Camara oversees a laboratory at École polytechnique de Montréal. His duties were suspended after his arrest and he was barred from campus. The native of Guinea, who is here as a foreign student; he said it is difficult for him to study as if nothing happened. He has met with the director of the school and his department. “They are ready to give me back my job, when I feel better,” he said.

As for the $500 ticket Camara received for using his cell phone while driving, he said: “I was not on the phone.”

ssschwartz@postmedia.com