Diplomat involved in Gatineau police altercation was in legal dispute with landlord

The Senegalese diplomat involved in an allegedly violent Gatineau Police Service intervention later deemed "totally unacceptable" by Global Affairs Canada was embroiled in a rental dispute in the leadup to last week's incident. 

In a June 2022 decision by Quebec's provincial rental tribunal, the diplomat was ordered to pay more than $45,000, plus interest, to a landlord who claimed his home in Gatineau's Aylmer sector was damaged during the diplomat's stay there. 

Tribunal database information obtained by Radio-Canada also indicates a "notice of execution" was filed in the case on July 29, followed by a notice to "enter a place" on Aug. 2 — the same day the altercation took place between Gatineau police officers and the Embassy of Senegal diplomat, who was working from home. 

Last week, Senegal's government issued a statement alleging that "Canadian police exercised humiliating physical and moral violence on the diplomat 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 in Ottawa, Viviane Laure Elisabeth Bampassy, declined to comment on the incident while an investigation is underway. 

In its own version of events, the Gatineau Police Service said officers were accompanying a bailiff executing an order. Police arrested an aggressive person after one officer was punched, and a second officer was bitten while the person resisted arrest, according to that account. 

Quebec's Ministry of Public Security announced the province's police watchdog is investigating the actions of officers and that a police complaint against the arrested person has been dropped "due to the applicable diplomatic immunity."

The incident involved the First Counsellor of the Embassy of Senegal in Ottawa, the ministry added. 

The list of people from Senegal accredited with Global Affairs Canada includes only one female first counsellor. That same person is named in the tribunal decision and a later record indicating the Aug. 2 visit. 

CBC News is not naming her because it has not been able to reach her to respond to the allegations.

It remains unclear what else may have happened in the two months between the provincial rental tribunal's decision to fine the diplomat and the bailiff's visit to her home last Tuesday — or what exactly the bailiff was doing at the home last week. 

But in a June 2 decision, an administrative judge with the tribunal described the rental dispute between the diplomat and her landlord, following an April 26 hearing the diplomat reportedly did not attend. 

According to the decision, the diplomat rented the home from November 2018 to October 2020.

In the summer of 2019, the landlord found the basement floor soaked and mould on the walls and learned of other unspecified issues later that year, when the diplomat's spouse allegedly refused to let the landlord inspect rooms and called police, according to the decision.