Soleiman Faqiri's family, civil rights watchdog demand Ford government act on inquest recommendations

Soleiman Faqiri's family and 36 Canadian prominent civic groups are demanding Monday the Ontario government apologize for his death and start acting on the recommendations of a coroner's inquest.

Yusuf Faqiri, Soleiman's brother, said the Ford government hasn't implemented a single recommendation from a 2023 coroner's inquest that deemed Soleiman's death a homicide and made 57 recommendations to prevent something similar from happening again.

Faqiri said he believes the government wants Soleiman's story to be forgotten. His family, he said, has vowed to not let that happen because what happened to Soleiman — who died at the hands of multiple guards inside a provincially-run correctional facility — could happen to any Canadian suffering from a mental health crisis.

"This is a life and death issue," he told CBC Toronto. 

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) has written a letter, cosigned by the leaders of 35 civic organizations from across the country, in support of the Faqiri family's call for an apology. The use of force that led to Faqiri's death, it said, was "unjustified."

The letter, addressed Solicitor General Michael Kerzner, is also seeking an update on why the government hasn't struck a committee to implement recommendations from the Faqiri inquest, and why it still hasn't created a provincial corrections inspectorate that could look into individual and systemic complaints in correctional facilities.

The province has said it is reviewing the inquest's recommendations — which are nonbinding — but hasn't publicly announced any changes stemming from it.

"Individuals living with significant mental health conditions in custody are some of the most vulnerable people in our province," Shakir Rahim, the director of the CCLA's criminal justice program said in the letter.

The letter is cosigned by groups including, but not limited to: the John Howard Society of Ontario, The Empowerment Council, the Ontario Association of Social Workers and the Black Legal Action Centre. 

Asked to respond to the CCLA letter, Dakota Moniz, a spokesperson for Solicitor General Michael Kerzner, said what happened to Soleiman Faqiri "is a tragedy." 

"Our thoughts are with his family and all those who have lost loved ones in the correctional system," Moniz said in an email Sunday. 

Moniz went on to say the Progressive Conservative government has made record investments in the province's corrections system, including spending millions to update and build new facilities and establishing a new health services division to deliver mental health and addictions support for those in custody. 

The email does not say whether the province will apologize to Faqiri's family or how many of the 57 recommendations from the coroner's office have been completed. 

The long-awaited inquest into Faqiri's death took place in late 2023 and pulled back the curtain on what was described to jurors as a broken system, plagued by a lack of training and staff, tensions around different layers of management and an overreliance on segregation.