Montrealer Mamadi III Fara Camara, who was wrongly accused of savagely assaulting a police officer from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), has finally reached a settlement agreement.
“Mr. Camara and his family are satisfied since this agreement allows them to close the legal process related to the deeply upsetting events they have gone through,” said his lawyer Me Virginie Dufresne-Lemire. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
On January 28, 2021, along the Metropolitan Highway, the patrol boat Sanjay Vig was attacked while interacting with Mamadi III Fara Camara. The 31-year-old is mistakenly considered the prime suspect and spent six days in jail due to the mistaken persona. The head of the SPVM, Sylvain Caron, apologized to him a few days later.
After spending two months on the run, Ali Ngarukiye, the “real suspect” of the attack, was arrested in April 2021.
Tunnel vision
Mr. Camara and his family had filed a civil lawsuit for $1.2 million against the SPVM and the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) in July. They accused the authorities of having immersed themselves in tunnel vision that caused them to set aside crucial evidence showing that he was not the right suspect.
The 31-year-old man claimed a total of nearly $800,000 for being humiliated, injured in the cheek during his arrest, which he describes as brutal, and strip searched twice during his detention. The academic, who had no criminal record, would even have been called “a fool” by one of the police.
The entourage of Mr. Camara, plunged in spite of himself into a nightmare following his arrest, demanded compensation of nearly $400,000.
Further details will follow.
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