The Globe and Mail

A joke that a Montreal school monitor misheard eventually landed a Muslim teenager in custody, with officials convinced that the youth was planning to blow up their school and officers taking him away in handcuffs, a civil suit alleges.

The teenager and his mother are suing Collège Charlemagne, a private school in Montreal’s West Island, alleging that his academic prospects were damaged after he was singled out and framed as an extremist.

The incident, which unfolded in the fall of 2015, illustrates the tensions and fears in Montreal schools after a spate of incidents of students becoming radicalized.

Earlier that year, Montrealers were shocked by the departure of seven young people who left secretly to join the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria. Another eight young people were intercepted just before they boarded a flight for the Middle East.

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