Witnesses to police brutality during an anti-sanitary measures demonstration, members of the Farfadaas group declared that they had spontaneously decided to block the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine bridge-tunnel to denounce this violence on March 13, 2021, they pleaded at their trial for mischief and conspiracy.
It began Monday at the Montreal courthouse before Judge Jean-Jacques Gagné of the Court of Quebec.
On March 13, 2021, a major demonstration to oppose health measures aimed at countering COVID-19 took place in Montreal.
Claiming to have witnessed acts of brutality on the part of the police towards the demonstrators, a group including the defendants decided – spontaneously, they say – to make a “stunt” in the tunnel.
“To attract the attention of the media and the public”, explained to the judge the accused Steeve Charland, member of the Farfadaas and former leader of the identity group La Meute.
“We had to get a message across quickly,” added Mario Roy, a leader of the anti-mask movement, who maintains that he had no intention of harming motorists behind them. But when you demonstrate, you don’t care about every person who has to go through it, he admitted in cross-examination.
Of the original seven defendants in this case, only three remain: one died before trial, two pleaded guilty, including one on Monday morning, and Thursday, Tommy Rioux was acquitted.
The Crown prosecutor, Mr.e Martin Bourgeois, told the judge that he had no evidence against this defendant and the judge pronounced an acquittal. Mr. Rioux said he did not even know that the blocking of the bridge would take place: he had just asked someone with a vehicle to take him home.
This leaves Mario Roy, Steeve Charland and Karol Tardif, who all face two counts. They are all representing themselves, without a lawyer.
A few minutes of immobilization
Videos filed in evidence – those of the accused themselves, of motorists or those captured by the cameras of the Ministry of Transport – show two rows of vehicles occupying the three lanes of the tunnel slowing down before coming to a standstill around 6:30 p.m. Passengers descend to sing on the roadway, to the sound of horns and insults aimed at Prime Minister François Legault. We then see a motorist, probably exasperated, attacking protesters’ vehicles with a hammer, which puts an end to the blockage.
The traffic stoppage lasted about five minutes, according to Crown prosecutor Me Bourgeois. Rather 4 minutes and 11 seconds, corrected Mr. Charland, maintaining that the stop would have been shorter without the intervention of “the man with the hammer”.
Mme Tardif testified that the vehicles slowed down before coming to a stop in a safe manner.
Oral arguments are due to begin Thursday afternoon.