Saturday, July 16, 2016
By NICHOLAS KEUNG
The SIU has cleared two Peterborough police officers in the death of Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan Friday, same day a coroner’s inquest was called.
Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)
More than a year after Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan died in immigration custody, Ontario’s police watchdog has cleared the officers responsible for guarding him at a hospital from any wrongdoing.
On Friday, the Special Investigations Unit said there are “no reasonable grounds” to charge the two Ontario Provincial Police officers who were watching the 39-year-old man at the Peterborough Regional Health Centre where he was under medical treatment in June.
“The issue that I need to determine is whether or not the actions of either of the subject officers were a significant contributing cause of the man’s death,” said SIU director Tony Loparco in a statement. “My conclusion is that neither officer did anything that could reasonably satisfy the essential offence element of causation.”
Earlier in the day, the province’s coroner’s office also called an inquest into the death of Hassan, who had been detained at the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay for three years and struggled for decades with mental illness and diabetes.
“The SIU has yet again found police not responsible for another black Somali refugee’s death. The fact is if Abdurahman hadn’t been in detention, he would be alive today,” said Tings Chak of the advocacy group End Immigration Detention Network.
“We can’t bring Abdurahman back, but Mr. Goodale can step in and stop future deaths by ending immigration detentions now. We can wait for another two, three years for an inquest, which may turn out nothing.”
Hassan’s family has declined to comment on the SIU and coroner’s decisions.
There have been at least three other deaths of immigration detainees so far this year, including Chilean Francisco Javier Romero Astroga, 39, at Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton; Melkioro Gahungu, 64, a Burundian migrant at Toronto East Detention Centre, and an unnamed 24-year-old man in Edmonton Remand Centre.
Since Monday, some 60 immigration detainees in Lindsay and the Toronto East Detention Centre in Scarborough have been on a hunger strike demanding a meeting with Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale to discuss their concern — a request his office has rejected.
Scott Bardsley, Goodale’s spokesperson, said the minister is working on issues related to detention and hopes to put forward proposals in public later this year.
In recent months, Goodale has already met with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and other groups for reforms, said Bardsley.
“The government will consider how to strengthen the accountability and security of all our security, including Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Our goal is to ensure our Canadian approach is world-class, including our methods of enforcement, with effective transparency and accountability,” he said.
Alvin Brown, who came to Canada from Jamaica 32 years ago when he was 8, has been detained at Toronto East Detention Centre since September 2011 after he served a jail sentence for robbery and lost his permanent resident status. He joined the hunger strike on Tuesday.
“It is cruel for them to punish us, torture us and lock us away indefinitely. It must end now,” said Brown, who has been held because Jamaican officials have refused to issue him travel documents.
Hassan came to Canada as a refugee in 1993 from war-torn Somalia. Although he was granted asylum, he never became a permanent resident because of his mental illness.
Canada’s border agency runs an immigration detention centre in Rexdale but uses provincial jail facilities in the event of an overflow, or if an inmate poses dangers to others, has medical needs or is not likely to be deported anytime soon.
On any given day, more than 200 immigration detainees are held in Ontario jails alone.