CANADA: Student arrested over false terror scare

Officials at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal refused to disclose whether the school had notified police of a report of a possible suicide-bomber before security guards zeroed in on a public servant and part-time MBA student of Arab origin, writes Jan Ravensbergen for the Montreal Gazette. Computer specialist Slimane Zahaf was briefly but violently arrested on Tuesday afternoon, pinned to the ground and suffered an injury to his lower back - on the mistaken impression he was an explosives-carrying terrorist.

He had been detained in a ground-floor lobby at the university's management school. UQAM spokeswoman Francine Jacques said a "person suspected of carrying a bomb" had been reported at the start of Tuesday afternoon by a "third party" describing to university security officials a short-haired man wearing a long black coat. The suspect sought was "of Arabic appearance".

An outraged Zahaf - who said he was reconsidering his study plans after the injury, which has left him with a painful limp - insisted he was "absolutely" a victim of racial profiling. "There were three other men in black coats in the area. They were white. They were not approached," he said.
Full report on the Montreal Gazette site