Former Quebec mosque president feared losing his house the night his car was torched, jury hears

Mohamed Labidi, the former president of the Quebec City mosque where last year's deadly shooting took place, and his wife say they were afraid their house would burn down last Aug. 6. That's the night someone set fire to their car, parked just metres away on their driveway while Labidi and his daughters slept inside.

Labidi and Habiba Ben Mansour were the first two witnesses to testify at the arson trial of Marc Gagnon. Gagnon, 45, was arrested a few weeks after the fire which destroyed the couple's Toyota Corolla.

Ben Mansour testified their daughter was the last person to use the car, bringing it home around 10:45 p.m. on the Saturday night.

Labidi returned to his Sainte-Foy home in the family's second vehicle two hours later. He went to bed, but his wife was awake when she saw a flash of light and heard a detonation at 1:15 a.m.

"I was lucky that I had woken up," said Ben Mansour, who was getting a glass of water when she heard the first blast. "[The fire] was next to the house, and there was no one around to see or hear."

Ben Mansour called for her husband as she witnessed flames engulf the car, and when he arrived, they saw the cedar hedge next to their home was ablaze.

"I was most afraid because of the hedge," Labidi told Superior Court Justice François Huot and a jury of nine men and three women Tuesday.

"As a reflex, I grabbed a bucket to try to put out the fire, but I couldn't get too close because the fire was burning intensely in the car."

Labidi said he had almost managed to douse the flames in the hedge when he slipped on water near the sink, fracturing a rib.

"What worried me the most was that the house could be ravaged by fire," said Labidi.

Crown intends to show Gagnon's role

In his opening statement, Crown prosecutor René Verret said he intends to prove Gagnon "helped and encouraged" Mathieu Bilodeau, 34, who pleaded guilty in February to setting that fire and four others during a four-week period in the summer of 2017.

Verret said he intends to call on Bilodeau as a witness and show the court his five-hour-long police interrogation video.

He described Bilodeau as a man with a mental disability and asked the jury to take that into consideration during his testimony, because Verret is expecting some inconsistencies.

The jurors heard later Tuesday that Bilodeau admitted to the woman who ran the special care home where he was living that he set fire to a bin at a local Tim Hortons coffee shop the month before he set fire to Labidi's vehicle.

Hourya Attaoui testified that in September, Bilodeau threw a tantrum and had to be admitted to the Robert Giffard psychiatric institution when he found out the fires were under police investigation.

She described the 35-year-old as someone who behaved like a seven-year-old, who cried at the drop of a hat, believed anything, was nosey and illiterate.