Inmate’s family still awaits answers
Man who died in Ontario jail had more than 50 blunt force injuries on body, report says
“My brother was alive before this altercation. He’s dead after.” YUSUF FAQIRI SOLEIMAN’S BROTHER
More than seven months after the death of his brother, Soleiman, Yusuf Faqiri and his family are still waiting for an answer as to why he died.
A coroner’s report, released to the family earlier this month, showed that Soleiman, 30, suffered over 50 injuries before dying in a segregation cell at the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ont., on Dec. 15, 2016, after an almost threehour long confrontation with prison officers.
According to the report, Soleiman had a bruised laceration on his forehead, and multiple bruises and abrasions on his face, torso and limbs — all the result of blunt impact trauma.
The report also details the final moments of Soleiman’s life. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2005, Soleiman had been placed in a segregated cell while he waited for a bed at a mental-health facility.
The afternoon of his death, he was taken to the shower where he stayed for just under two hours. He resisted the efforts of guards to remove him by spraying them with water and throwing shampoo bottles.
At 3 p.m., after he calmed down, guards escorted him back to his cell, his wrists and ankles cuffed. He spat on a guard and was hit in return. When he resisted going into his cell, guards used pepper spray on him, twice, and forced him to the ground. An alarm was called to get assistance, after which a large number of correctional officers entered Soleiman’s cell, according to the report.
The prison guards took shifts and described the ordeal as exhausting. When witnesses saw that Soleiman wasn’t moving, medical personnel were called. Soleiman died at 3:45 p.m., 11 days after he was taken into custody in Lindsay, the report says.
Some of the incident was recorded on video, which the coroner had access to, but neither the family nor their lawyers have seen. Digital im- ages of the scene after his death show several discarded items outside his cell, including a mattress, book, white and orange sheets, and garbage.
The coroner’s report did not determine a cause of death, calling it “unascertained.”
“The fact that the report doesn’t conclude what, exactly, from a medical perspective, caused his body to stop functioning, doesn’t diminish the fact that . . . there was no other event prior to his death that could have been material,” said Edward Marrocco, the Faqiri family’s lawyer. “The only thing that happened to him before he became unresponsive was this beating.”
“My brother was alive before this altercation,” Yusuf said. “He’s dead after.” Yusuf and his family met with the coroner to discuss the report, a common procedure, according to Dr. David Eden, Regional Supervising Coroner of inquests. “(Unascertained deaths) are not common, but there are times when it is the best finding to make,” Eden said. In this case, it was “based on the best information (they) have at the moment.”
This was the second time the Faqiri family had any contact with the government. The first was a letter sent to them four months after Soleiman’s death, by Marie-France Lalonde, minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services. The letter offered “heartfelt” and “sincere” condolences, adding that the ministry “takes the responsibility of individuals in our care very seriously.”
“It is disgraceful the way my family has been treated,” Yusuf said. “To this day, we have no explanation.”
Because Soleiman’s death is still part of an ongoing police investigation, neither Eden nor the ministry could provide comment. When asked if there would be an inquest, Eden answered “certainly,” but only after consultation with the family and the conclusion of the investigation.
According to the Ministry of the Attorney General, in Ontario, the investigation and laying of criminal charges is a function of the police.
However, Marrocco says that, based on what he’s been told by police, the investigation by the Kawartha police has concluded and they have reached out to a Crown Attorney’s office “for an opinion on whether and which criminal charges to put forward.”
Both Marrocco and Yusuf expect criminal charges to be laid, saying that the post-mortem report gives reasonable grounds for this. Kawartha police said that they could not comment at this time.
The Faqiri family were refugees from Afghanistan who moved to Canada in the early 1990s, when Soleiman was six years old.
They have lived in the Ajax-Pickering area since 1998, where Soleiman is now buried. Yusuf said family was very important to Soleiman and he had a special relationship with everyone, spoke three languages and was pursuing an engineering degree.
“We’re in 2017, and as Canadians, we have to really, really be alarmed at what happened to Soleiman,” Yusuf said.