Man who lost his mind in solitary settles lawsuit
Mutiur Rehman, the young killer who lost his mind on Innes Road after a staggering 18 months in solitary confinement, has won an out-of-court settlement from the province for failing him.
Prison staff fed him through a hatch, and beyond the odd 20-minute visit from a relative, Rehman, just 22 at the time, spent his days absent human interaction.
Rehman was at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre awaiting trial on a charge of second-degree murder for the 2013 stabbing death of André Boisclair.
He started hallucinating in his lonely cell, and lost his mind.
“He looks like he’s losing his brains,” his father, Habib Rehman, told this newspaper in 2016.
The younger Rehman’s nowsettled lawsuit claimed nobody at the jail recognized or reported his deteriorating mental health. It was his defence lawyer, Dominic Lamb, who flagged it after his client was incapable of giving instructions about the case.
At the request of Lamb, Rehman was transferred on Jan. 15, 2016, for treatment at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, where he was diagnosed with an acute episode of schizophrenia. In a March 23 assessment report, a psychiatrist said Rehman appeared to be hallucinating during their interview sessions. Rehman said the hallucinations started in segregation and he reported no prior history of hearing voices or medical problems.
The psychiatrist’s report was drawn from medical records, Ottawa police reports, interviews with Rehman and a Royal social worker’s conversations with family.
In one interview, Rehman appeared to have delusions and grinned while talking about the murder case against him.
Rehman was found unfit for trial and the psychiatrist linked his deteriorating mind to his 18 months in solitary confinement.
After getting treatment at the Royal, Rehman’s mental state improved enough for him to plead guilty to manslaughter.
(His successful treatment at the hospital was intense and he was subjected to “chemical restraining,” in which patients are restrained and administered drugs to suppress aggression.)
He had repeated experiences where he reported slain rapper Tupac Shakur was talking to him.
Rehman launched a $500,000 lawsuit against Ontario’s jailhouse authority in 2017. It was recently settled out of court.
“The length of time he spent in segregation was an outrageous violation of the Mandella Rules,” said his lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, referring to the UN standard for a 15-day limit in solitary. UN studies say anything beyond that can cause psychological and physical harm.
The lawyer said the case screamed for a civil remedy and reported his client now has a second chance with a bank account full of money waiting for him when he finishes serving his eight-year sentence for the 2013 killing.
Greenspon would not discuss details of the confidential settlement.
Ontario’s jailhouse authority has declined in the past to say why Rehman was kept in solitary for so long and refused to say if then-correctional services minister Yadira Naqvi knew about the length of time the killer spent in isolation.
The length of time he spent in segregation was an outrageous violation of the Mandella Rules.