Upon learning in the fall of 2022 of the existence of the Sûreté du Québec contract, Daniel Renaud was “shocked.” As his employer, the newspaper La Presse, revealed this Friday, November 29, this journalist was the subject of a contract in 2021 put in his head by a hitman. Frédérick Silva offered the sum of 100,000 Canadian dollars (approximately 67,500 euros) to the person who eliminated the journalist specialized in organized crime.
Known for having rented his services to several criminal organizations and sentenced to life imprisonment for several murders, Frédérick Silva became an informant in 2022 and has lived under police protection since then. With your help, Quebec authorities hope to shed light on dozens of unsolved homicides.
“I said I was tired of him.”
But before cooperating with justice, Frédérick Silva was forced to reveal all his misdeeds and confessed to having attempted to murder Daniel Renaud in 2021. At that time, Silva was on trial for three murders and one attempted murder. Daniel Renaud, who had already dedicated numerous articles to the hitman, covered this trial for La Presse.
In his confession, Frédérick Silva says that he contacted two influential people in organized crime to get rid of Renaud. Community members would have then considered attacking a journalist to be a bad idea. “I said I was fed up with him and that I would take care of it. They simply told me: ‘Okay, do what you want, we are with you in your decisions,’ explains the murderer.
According to La Presse, Frédérick Silva even outlined a plan to execute the contract, which was in effect for two months. He eventually changed his mind because he felt he had “bigger issues to solve.”
“We’re not in a movie.”
“I don’t censor myself, but I always show restraint so as not to go into details of the private lives of criminals and avoid putting lives in danger,” Daniel Renaud reacted.
“I never thought I could have been the subject of a contract like that. I am even surprised and dismayed that people within organized crime were able to accept this, although they were apparently reluctant.
Daniel Renaud received the support of numerous journalists and the Premier of Quebec. “We are not in a movie. It is not good that in Quebec a contract is put on the head of a journalist because he did his job,” reacted François Legault, quoted by Le Devoir, another Quebec newspaper. “It’s really not the kind of Quebec we want.”
In the past, several Quebec journalists have been targeted by organized crime. On September 13, 2000, Michel Auger, journalist for monteal’s diaryHe was shot six times in the back but survived this assassination attempt.
Source: BFM TV
