……THE CIVIL SERVANTS INVOLVED WORK FOR US!

Editors note: This timely entry interrupts the “Voice in the Wilderness” series….the final two installments will follow.

“More than a hundred Canadian doctors, lawyers, academics and politicians have signed an open letter calling for accountability in the death of a mentally ill man at the hands of Ontario prison guards in 2016.”

This is how Toronto Star reporter Margaryta Ignatenko began “Open letter calls for justice in jailed man’s death”, her story published by the paper on February 29th. The column acknowledged contributions from the files of Fatima Sayed, another reporter on the Star’s staff who has also written on the death of Soleiman Faqiri.

The letter was sent to Ontario Premier Doug Ford and underscores the frustration with a seemingly stalled second investigation into the death of Soleiman Faqiri. First time round, police declined to file charges, but the case was reopened when an eyewitness came forward, risking life and limb by doing so, prompting pressure upon the government to act.

Not to be left out, we wrote to Sylvia Jones, Ontario’s solicitor general, whose ministry includes responsibility for provincial jails:-

Monday, March 9, 2020

The Honourable Sylvia Jones, Solicitor General,
Queen’s Park,
Toronto, ON M7A 1A1

Re: Soleiman Faqiri

Dear Minister Jones:

The media coverage around the beating death of Soleiman Faqiri at Lindsay’s provincial jail in December of 2016 is missing a reality check.

No matter the issue guards had with Mr. Faqiri, once he was put in a cell, it was left only to close and lock the door. That didn’t happen because those guards intended to beat him. The more he tried to save himself, the more he was beaten. He was beaten in shifts by uniformed civil servants. He was beaten to death by uniformed civil servants.

Assaults on inmates by guards are common and frequent in Canada’s federal and provincial prison industry and only come to public attention when injuries need hospital treatment…..or an inmate dies. Assaults on guards by inmates are common and frequent too but are more in the public domain. Unmentioned is they always result in a beating of the offending inmate. That in addition to victims such as Soleiman Faqiri where guards are simply pissed off.

Take one piece of advice from this long-time advocate/activist. Check the institutional histories, the incident reports, for the guards involved, and for the officer in charge of the segregation unit at Central East in particular. He is after all responsible for directing the actions of his staff.

You and so many other public servants appear anxious to make this manslaughter by fellow provincial employees just go away. That’s a sad indictment of justice in Ontario.

Yours truly,

Charles H. Klassen

Doug Ford was copied, along with Senator Kim Pate, a signatory to the letter, Yasin Dwyer, Executive Director of the Muslim Chaplaincy of Toronto, Nader Hasan, the Faqiri family lawyer, Dr. Dirk Huyer, Ontario’s chief coroner, Warren Thomas, president of OPSEU, and Toronto Star reporter Margaryta Ignatenko.

……..justice for Soleiman Faqiri is still a long way off.