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Draped in a flag of Quebec, a middle-aged man tried to enter an ultra-Orthodox Jewish day school on Tuesday, claiming he wanted to “liberate” its students.

The man drove up to the Yeshiva Gedola school on Deacon Rd. in Park Extension in a PT Cruiser, and rang on the intercom of the daycare run out of the building, said Rachel Schecter, the director of the public Centre de la Petite Enfance.

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“[My staff] came to get me to say there was someone very strange at the door,” Schecter said. “When I answered through the intercom, the man told me: ‘I want to talk to the children because they are imprisoned in this school.’ He was speaking perfect French. He didn’t sound drunk or anything.”

He told me: ‘I want to liberate the children. If you don’t let me in, I’ll protest on the sidewalk’

Schecter said she called police because she didn’t know the man’s intentions, or whether he was carrying a weapon.

“He told me: ‘I want to liberate the children. If you don’t let me in, I’ll protest on the sidewalk.’ ”

She told the man he could not enter because he was not a parent of a child at the school. He then walked away.