A Montreal resident currently seeking to be candidate in the NDP leadership race saw his criminal trial begin on Friday on charges alleging he harassed a Montreal police detective and tried to obstruct her work after she informed him he would be arrested for harassing a woman on X.

Yves Engler, 46, faces three charges in all in the trial held before Quebec Court Judge Guylaine Rivest at the Montreal courthouse. He initially faced four charges, but the one involving the person he was alleged to have harassed on X, formerly known as Twitter, was withdrawn on July 14.

Engler, an author who is seeking to be part of the current race to lead the NDP, first made headlines in 2002 when he helped disrupt a speech by then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia University. In recent

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