IV.

Along a dimly lit hallway enclosed by white concrete walls is a series of doors, some a clinical pale blue, others an anemic pink, giving a hospital-like feel to the Central East Correctional Centre’s maximum solitary confinement unit, known to inmates and guards alike as 8-seg.

On one end of the hall is a pair of pink doors, each marked “shower.” In front, there is what looks to be a nurses’ station plastered with a collage-like collection of signs.

“Caution.” “No razor, no pencils.” “Suicide watch.” “No juice bags.”

Scotch-taped to each pale blue cell door is a sheet of paper with a black-and-white photo of the inmate inside. At the farthest end of the hallway from the showers is cell B-10, where Faqiri was supposed to be housed until his mental health assessment. That was the plan, anyway.

Faqiri was to be housed in cell B-10 until his mental health could be assessed. He barely made it inside before an altercation erupted. (Kawartha Lakes Police Service)

Faqiri was to be housed in cell B-10 until his mental health could be assessed. He barely made it inside before an altercation erupted. (Kawartha Lakes Police Service)

A police report outlines the official version of what happened instead:

Around 1:15 p.m. on Dec. 15, Faqiri was escorted in a wheelchair to the shower. He stayed there for about an hour and a half, refusing to come out, spraying water and shampoo through the barred stall door.

Fifteen minutes later, the supervising officer called the unit’s deputy superintendent requesting the help of the crisis intervention team, known as ICIT. Meanwhile, guards placed a welding shield outside the shower to protect themselves from the water. The request for a crisis team was denied.

Instead, a psychologist employed by the jail arrived, offered Faqiri crackers and peanut butter if he would co-operate and go to his cell. That seemed to calm Faqiri down.

By 2:50 p.m., Faqiri agreed to be handcuffed. Five correctional officers began to escort him down the hall. A sixth joined and Faqiri’s behaviour escalated, according to the report.

Faqiri began resisting entry into his cell, spitting at the guards. One officer delivered “an open hand strike” but missed, according to the report. Faqiri was pepper-sprayed and forced into the cell, where there were no cameras.

What happened next isn’t captured on video. Instead, the rest of the report relies on “interviews of the involved parties, witnesses and forensic evidence.”

Inside the cell, Faqiri reportedly continued to resist the efforts of guards, whose goal, according to the report, was to remove his handcuffs and leave. As they tried to keep him on the ground, Faqiri, with his wrists cuffed, apparently tried to strike at the guards and get on his feet. A second round of pepper spray was used. Faqiri was on the ground again, with his head toward the cell door.

“Code blue” was called — an emergency call to any available guards to assist. Twenty to 30 guards arrived and the original guards “tap out,” “exhausting themselves” in the struggle.

There is no footage of what took place inside the cell. These blood smears were among the hundreds of photos of the scene taken by investigators following Faqiri’s death and obtained by The Fifth Estate. (Kawartha Lakes Police Service)

There is no footage of what took place inside the cell. These blood smears were among the hundreds of photos of the scene taken by investigators following Faqiri’s death and obtained by The Fifth Estate. (Kawartha Lakes Police Service)

As CBC News revealed in the days after his death, Faqiri’s limbs were held down as leg irons were put on and a spit hood was placed over his head. The officers were able to gain control of Faqiri, who, according to the report, was “exhibiting assaultive and resistive behaviour.”

Faqiri appeared to become “compliant,” the report says. He was turned, his head now at the back of the cell away from the door, face down, arms above his head, and reportedly responded when told his cuffs would be removed.

He placed his hands behind his back and was handcuffed. The remaining guards left the cell. The door was locked.

According to the report, a supervisor mistakenly believed the ICIT team was on the way to remove the cuffs from Faqiri and put him in a recovery position. It wasn’t.



Instead, moments later, one of the staff noticed through the window that Faqiri wasn’t breathing. The cell door was opened and guards attempted CPR. 911 was called. Nurses attempted resuscitation with a defibrillator. Paramedics arrived. Life-saving efforts failed.

At 3:47 p.m., Faqiri was pronounced dead.

That night, his family received a knock at the door from two Durham Region police officers telling them the unthinkable: their son was never coming home.

For the next year and a half, Faqiri’s family waited in agony, trying to make sense of what happened to their son and brother.

"We want to know why my brother died," Yusuf Faqiri told CBC News in the days after his brother’s death. "Why did Soleiman die? How did Soleiman die? That's what we're looking for."

Closure, they thought, might come in the form of a coroner’s report. Instead, on July 11, 2017, the long-awaited report deemed Faqiri’s cause of death “unascertained.”

The report listed a litany of injuries that the 30-year-old suffered in the final moments of his life, with more than 50 signs of “blunt impact trauma,” including abrasions across his body, ligature marks around his wrists and ankles, bruises to his upper and lower extremities — and to his neck.

A post-mortem report documented more than 50 signs of what it described as 'blunt impact trauma,' including ligature marks, bruises across Faqiri’s body and cuts, as well as internal injuries discovered during the autopsy. (Kawartha Lakes Police Service)

A post-mortem report documented more than 50 signs of what it described as 'blunt impact trauma,' including ligature marks, bruises across Faqiri’s body and cuts, as well as internal injuries discovered during the autopsy. (Kawartha Lakes Police Service)

"Many of the injuries would be in keeping with the story of attempts to restrain this man, but falls, or blows or other impacts to these regions cannot be excluded," the report said. Still, none were deemed sufficient to have killed Faqiri. Among the causes ruled out were disease and genetic mutations of the heart and blood vessels.

What could not be ruled out, according to forensic pathologist Dr. Maggie Bellis, was asphyxiation, which might or might not have resulted from the spit hood.

Her conclusion: It was impossible to pinpoint a cause of death. Investigators with the Kawartha Lakes Police Service concluded there were no grounds for criminal charges against any of the correctional staff involved.

But for all the detail contained in the report’s 56 pages, the family was left with many more questions about Faqiri’s death.

As it turns out, they weren’t the only ones with questions about just what happened that day.

On Dec. 15, 2016, paramedic Jason Bibeau had been driving down Kawartha Lakes County Road 36 on a routine EMS call when a call came from dispatch asking if the patient he was transporting was stable enough for him to make an emergency stop at the Lindsay jail. It was for Faqiri.

Before he was taken to the Central East Correctional Centre, Faqiri had been apprehended about 10 times under Ontario’s Mental Health Act. Each time, his family says, he was taken to a hospital. This time, he was taken to jail. (Ousama Farag/CBC)

Before he was taken to the Central East Correctional Centre, Faqiri had been apprehended about 10 times under Ontario’s Mental Health Act. Each time, his family says, he was taken to a hospital. This time, he was taken to jail. (Ousama Farag/CBC)

A paramedic with 27 years of experience, Bibeau provided a witness statement to police in the days after Faqiri died, of which The Fifth Estate obtained a video recording.

Bibeau’s patient was stable, so he agreed to make the stop, arriving at the jail at 3:20 p.m. Inside, he was led to the top floor, where Faqiri was lying with no vital signs.

“It was kind of chaotic to be honest,” he said. “I needed to know what happened, what exactly happened here ... anybody witness it? I had about five people start to tell me at once and I couldn't — I’m like, ‘Just stop, I need one person to tell me.’”

Immediately, Bibeau started an intravenous line. Around that time, documents show, a second wave of paramedics arrived, a guard telling them: “He should be calm for you now, he was very violent.”

“I was confused,” one of the paramedics said in his statement, “because we were called for a dead guy.”

Even with emergency drugs, Faqiri’s heart wasn’t responding. A few minutes later, Bibeau phoned the physician at the local hospital, explaining what happened as best as he could.

Faqiri had been without a pulse for at least an hour. At 3:47 p.m., resuscitation efforts ceased.

In the ensuing minutes, Bibeau said he was given conflicting accounts about what had happened. Up to that point, he was told Faqiri had been in the cell alone when a guard noticed he’d stopped breathing. Later as he was packing up, another guard “piped up and said, ‘Wait a minute, no, he was never left alone.’ ”

If that were true, there would have been a guard in the cell with Faqiri when he stopped breathing, Bibeau recalled thinking. He started asking more questions. “The superintendent started getting antsy … almost having attitude with me a little because I was asking all these questions.

Paramedic John Bibeau, top, gave a witness statement to police expressing concerns about what officers told him transpired in the cell in the moments leading to Faqiri's death. (Kawartha Lakes Police Service)

Paramedic John Bibeau, top, gave a witness statement to police expressing concerns about what officers told him transpired in the cell in the moments leading to Faqiri's death. (Kawartha Lakes Police Service)

“I stopped dead in my tracks and I go, ‘I don’t really care who you are at this point, I’m the advanced paramedic. I just got a pronouncement for a 30-year-old man.’ I needed a straight story, I needed to know what was going on.”

Adding to the confusion was the fact that there were three unknown pills on the cell floor, he said, with no explanation of whose they were or how or why they were there.

“Seeing these pills and hearing that he wasn't by himself, that’s what made me uneasy,” Bibeau said.

“I don't know if the left hand knew what the right hand was saying or doing,” he said. “But the story I got for 9/10ths of the time that I was on scene was that he was in there by himself and was calling out for a nurse.”

With his statement complete, Bibeau had a moment alone, wiping his eyes. He let out a breath before the interviewing officer returned. The camera was shut off.