MONTREAL — Eight months after a police officer shot and killed 15-year-old Nooran Rezayi in Longueuil on Sept. 21, 2025, setting off protests, police here announced not that charges were being lodged against an officer, but that criminal charges were being laid against 11 of his teenage friends and schoolmates.
A report by the Bureau of Independent Investigations (BEI) into the killing of Rezayi has not been made public. Rezayi was killed while he was sitting on the curb talking with five friends.
Five of the 11 young people charged June 30 have been arrested. They face accusations of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit assault, wearing a disguise for criminal purposes, illegal possession of weapons and unlawful assembly. The youth were all aged between 13 and 17 at the time of the shooting. What these charges have to do with the shooting of Rezayi has not been explained.
Conspiracy charges should set off an alarm for all workers. Authorities use them when they have no actual crime to charge.
The police press conference announcing the charges “fails to answer the most fundamental questions raised by this case,” Fernando Belton, a lawyer for the Rezayi family, told the Journal de Montreal. “Namely, why the police officers shot Nooran, who, 19 seconds before their arrival, was sitting on the sidewalk with his cellphone.”
Rezayi’s family has filed a civil lawsuit for 2.2 million Canadian dollars ($1.6 million) against the city of Longueuil and its police force for using “unreasonable and disproportionate force.”
Over 1,000 of the Rezayi family’s neighbors, his schoolmates and others participated in a protest demanding “End Police Violence — Justice for Nooran” in the week following the killing. Hundreds came to his funeral, including large numbers from the Afghan community of which his family is part.
The new accusations against the 11 youth follow months of systematic police harassment.
“Since Nooran’s death, the young people have faced humiliation at the hands of the police,” the mother of one of the accused told the press. Police “chase them at the mall and at McDonald’s. They’re looking for any excuse to charge them.”
The question of whether the police officer who killed Rezayi should face any charges is in the hands of the Bureau of Independent Investigations whose inquiry is carried out hand in hand with the Montreal police.
“How can one claim independence when a police force is deeply involved in a BEI investigation that is supposed to be free from any interference?” said Belton. The Bureau of Independent Investigations is a police agency, with 50% of its investigators former cops. Out of the 493 investigations it has carried out since its creation, not a single one has led to a guilty verdict against a police officer.
Hundreds of people demonstrated against racial profiling in the Montreal-North neighborhood June 15 after authorities announced the suspension of 16 police officers over charges they had engaged in racial targeting of Arabs and blacks. Among other things, cops are accused of cutting off the dreadlocks of young black men who they arrest to keep as “trophies.” Radio-Canada also reported that tickets issued for driving offenses were allegedly issued solely on the basis of a person’s ethnic background. Two cops have been suspended and 14 others who are under investigation have been reassigned.
Cops target black and Arab youth
“There are at least 20 people in my circle who have been victims of racial profiling. It’s part of our daily lives,” Pamela Petit-Frere told demonstrators. Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada said her husband, who is black, has been stopped while driving “at least five or six times — for nothing” in the past year. Black people in Montreal are four times more likely to be stopped than Caucasians, while people of Arab descent are five times more likely to be stopped.
Substantial protests against cop brutality were organized at the same Montreal-North police station in 2008, after the cop killing of 18-year-old Freddy Villanueva. The BEI was created by authorities in 2016 as a way to try and calm widespread outrage over Villanueva’s death.
“Working people need to demand that the cop who killed Rezayi is charged and the harassment and frame-up of his friends and schoolmates is ended,” said Joe Young, Communist League candidate for the St. Laurent district in October’s provincial elections. “Only by organizing disciplined protests, like the ones that protested Rezayi’s killing last September, can we expose and push back cop brutality.”