After spending two days trying to demonstrate that the two blockades of the Louis Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel by the Farfadaas were demonstrations to denounce police brutality, co-defendant Mario Roy himself shattered that narrative on Wednesday. Documents he submitted in evidence show that he used one of these blockades as a “warning” for the police, which he used to arrest Prime Minister François Legault and Dr. Horacio Arruda demanded to avoid a “civil war”.
Posted at 7:14 p.m
Mr Roy took the witness stand on the third day of the trial of the four Farfadaas members charged with mischief and conspiracy to block the tunnel on March 13, 2021. The other three defendants, Steeve Charland, Karol Tardif and Tommy Rioux, are not intervening during his testimony.
The 51-year-old, who admitted to being the organizer of the March 13 blockade, had organized another similar blockade in December 2020 to denounce police brutality, which he said took place during an anti-sanitation demonstration in downtown Montreal a few minutes earlier.
Mr Roy submitted as evidence an exchange of text messages he allegedly had before and after the incident with Jason Gauthier, an investigator for the Sûreté du Québec Intelligence Agency. He told her he had been informed that protesters had more than “100 canisters of cayenne pepper for bears” during the downtown demonstration to protect themselves from police and that it was likely “that a bridge or a tunnel [soit] blocked when the SPVM [venait] children” the participants.
After the demonstration ended with several arrests led by riot police, Mr Roy decided to block the tunnel with a handful of accomplices. “Don’t go to the civil war […] We just want criminals like François Legault to go to jail,” Mario Roy urged police in a video he broadcast live on Facebook during the lockdown to “catch them right now.”
“The tunnel was closed for 4 minutes as a warning,” he later wrote to the SQ intelligence investigator. “By acting in this way the police will provoke a civil war instead of arresting the corrupt who have infiltrated the justice system,” Mr Roy added later in that exchange.
These documents were the subject of several cross-examination questions. “During the Bridge-Tunnel incident, did you hear about the arrest of the Prime Minister and Dr. Arruda demanded?” Judge Jean-Jacques Gagné asked during cross-examination.
“Absolutely,” Mr. Roy replied. “Quebec security forces knew I was peaceful,” he said.
That allegation opened the door to a series of questions from Crown Prosecutor Me Martin Bourgeois about Mr Roy’s nine criminal backgrounds, including convictions for assault with a gun, assault, threats, obstruction of a peace officer, breach of covenant, attempted fraud and falsifying false documents between 1992 and 2019. Mr Roy said he was “wrongly” convicted in all of those cases.
According to him, the allegations “only against core members” of the Farfadaas for blocking the tunnel are “a political shot”. He himself was charged after being labeled a “potential threat” by the government after he tried to have Horacio Arruda arrested. “There was a political pass on me,” he said.
In a feverish statement, Mr Roy also tried to demonstrate that someone had threatened him with death on March 13, 2021 and that a man armed with a hammer who broke the tunnel’s closure by banging on the leading cars killed “a Arrest warrant” had ” against him. He wanted to introduce as evidence an article from La Presse, which reported an alleged attempted murder of which he was the victim in a restaurant parking lot in 2020. “You lose me,” he countered Judge and reminded him of some reasons to focus on the charges at issue.
Since 2010, Mr. Roy has undergone approximately forty trials in Quebec courts, almost always without counsel.
The judge, who was very pedagogical, showed signs of impatience with him and on numerous occasions reminded him that at this stage of the trial he was at the bar to testify and not to argue his case. “I don’t talk about you much, Mr. Roy. When I speak, I want you to listen to me,” he pleaded with her.
“You are the judge who has helped me the most so far,” Mr. Roy then congratulated. Cross-examination of Mr Roy will continue on Thursday.