A young lawyer from Laval has been provisionally suspended from the bar after facing a series of charges of assault with a weapon and aggravated assault of a woman and obstructing the work of the police.
Admitted to the bar in August 2020 after graduating from the University of Montreal, Me Ali-Fayez Abdallah’s professional career quickly branched out. Just months before he was sworn in as a lawyer, the 31-year-old was first arrested by Laval police in April 2020.
Charged with not being able to drive, he was also arrested for assault, making death threats and obstructing police work.
That didn’t stop him from being hired by a law firm in Laval before he was due to appear in court in November 2020.
Except that on 15 October 2021, Me Ali-Fayez Abdallah was arrested again and imprisoned on a number of serious charges of assault with a weapon and assault with physical harm against an applicant in his thirties. Another charge of obstructing the work of two Laval police officers was added.
The lawyer remained in detention for five days, during which an even more serious charge of aggravated assault was added to his file following the investigation. It is this charge, punishable by 14 years in prison, that has prompted the legal counsel of the Barreau du Québec to temporarily suspend the lawyer.
Me Ali-Fayez Abdallah was able to regain his freedom on condition that he integrate the Beauséjour addiction treatment center 24 hours a day and not contact the applicant.
He was only able to leave his therapy on May 3, 2022 on the condition that he not communicate with people who use or sell drugs to pursue his therapeutic journey at the Laval Addiction Rehabilitation Center and to meet his psychiatrist.
At a first hearing in May 2022 before the Disciplinary Board of the Bar Association, the in-house counsel mentioned an article of the professional code that provided that a lawyer who is threatened with a criminal offense punishable by more than five years’ imprisonment can have his professional right suspended during the procedure. Ali-Fayez Albdallah agreed to the provision without contradicting it.
“The answerer [Abdallah] recognizes that the protection of the public requires the issuance of an immediate provisional suspension order in respect of them,” the Disciplinary Board states in its decision.
The accused was back in court last Friday but his lawyer, Me Pierre Poupart, deferred his case until March.
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