TORONTO

A construction worker has pressed assault charges against MP and former Toronto Police chief Julian Fantino for allegedly smearing ketchup on his behind during a raid in 1973.

Fantino, 73, a former veterans affairs minister, is accused of assault with a weapon (police baton) and assault causing bodily harm against John Bonnici, now 62.

Bonnici testified before a justice of the peace in a closed-door hearing in July that resulted in the two privately laid charges.

In an interview with the Toronto Sun, Bonnici said Fantino, then a detective, was clearly in command of the raid at 123 Gothic Ave. on Aug. 31, 1973.

“Julian Fantino — remember that name,” Bonnici recalled Fantino as saying as he and eight other officers arrested and handcuffed Bonnici and his friend John Krotokis, a truck driver, with their hands behind their backs.

He says officers roughed him up for several minutes and one officer kneed him in the back while his friend was being assaulted in a bedroom.

He alleges an officer then poured ketchup down his buttocks and Fantino spread the condiment by stroking the outside of his pants with a police baton.

“You look like you’re enjoying this, Bonnici,” he quoted Fantino as saying.

“And I said to him, ‘Not as much as you are, Fantino.’”

Bonnici was charged with possession of a stolen mailbox key, but the charge was dropped along with his complaint against police.

None of Bonnici’s allegations have been proven in court.

When asked why he brought the case forward four decades later, Bonnici became emotional.

“My late father (who died in 1993) was a retired British solider and the way Fantino treated the veterans, well, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It made me do something about this,” he said.

Fantino’s lawyer, Mark Sandler, said his client “intends to vigorously defend this allegation from 42 years ago.”

“You have to ask yourself why, 42 years later, a private complaint is being laid and disclosed in the middle of a federal election campaign?

“The allegation is completely without foundation. His motivation over complaints over the handling of the veterans’ issue two years ago also makes no sense whatsoever,” Sandler said.

The case will go to Old City Hall court Oct. 27.

sam.pazzano@sunmedia.ca