Man arrested after Quebec City campaign poster riddled with plastic bullets
Ali Dahan is running in the Quebec City riding of Jean-Talon as an independent
Quebec City police have arrested a 26-year-old man after an independent candidate's election poster was sprayed with plastic bullets.
Police say the man turned himself in Tuesday evening and that the act was not a hate crime.
The candidate, Ali Dahan, had filed a complaint with police after discovering the poster, which appeared to have been shot at with an air gun.
The man faces charges of mischief and unsafe use of a firearm. He was released on a promise to appear in court.
Dahan is running as an independent in the riding of Jean-Talon, which covers the site of the 2017 deadly mosque shooting in Sainte-Foy.
He discovered the act of vandalism on Monday, after hearing from a friend that some of his posters had been tampered with.
Another of his posters had been torn down in front of the mosque itself, but nothing prepared him for the sight of the poster riddled with plastic bullets.
"I was shaken. I was afraid," he recalled.
"It's scary to think that someone would use an air gun on a person's photo," he told Radio-Canada before an arrest had been made.
The poster was located in Saint-Benoît Park in Sainte-Foy.
Dahan is originally from the country of Djibouti in East Africa and has worked in human rights activism for 28 years.