The Senegalese diplomat whose arrest in Canada last week sparked outcry in Dakar owed more than C$45,000 in damages to her landlord for severely damaging her home, according to a court document.
The order of the Administrative Housing Tribunal, obtained Monday evening by Radio-Canada and which AFP was able to consult, indicates that Oumou Kalsoum Sall was sentenced on June 2 for “unpaid rent” and “damages for damages to housing”.
“The furniture is full of cockroaches. The furniture is scuffed and scratched. It lacks it. Everything is dirty”, can we read in the document which adds that four treatments against the pests did not make it possible to get rid of it.
We also learn that “the basement floor covering is soaked and that there is mold on the basement walls”.
This judgment surfaced after the Senegalese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced the arrest of its employee on Friday, citing a “racist” act, violent and committed despite the “diplomatic status of the victim and the inviolability of his home. “.
Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland reacted by denouncing at a press conference on Tuesday “acts of brutality […] unacceptable”.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, also specified the same day that she had met with her Senegalese counterpart and had assured him that the Canadian government was “waiting [ait] looking forward to a full investigation” into the matter.
On Saturday, the government of Quebec – the province where the incident took place – announced the opening of a police investigation by the Quebec police after “a police intervention which raises questions”.
The police in Gatineau, a Quebec suburb of the Canadian federal capital Ottawa, admitted Friday evening the altercation that occurred when a bailiff “with an order to be executed” had requested the assistance of the police.
The police said they faced “an aggressive and uncooperative person”.
“A policewoman was punched in the face and injured,” a statement said, and “the police have therefore decided to arrest” the diplomat. But she “resisted” and “bitten a second policeman”.
At “no” moment did the diplomat “mention having been injured or having pain”, underlines the police department, which nevertheless recognizes, without further details, that an ambulance was dispatched a few minutes later.