A few hours before being savagely beaten to death in his cell at the Rivière-des-Prairies detention center last Tuesday, Mahdi Hijazi had just learned that he would be released. “In just 24 hours, we were told that he was released, then that he was going to maximum security for no legitimate reason. Then we were told that he was dead. It was a downward spiral,” says Mahdi’s brother, Ali Hijazi.
“My mother had my brother’s favourite meal ready in the freezer for several weeks. When she heard he was going to be released, she put it in the fridge. Eventually, she threw it away,” Ali Hijazi recalls.
“How can we grieve when we are in complete nothingness?” asks Basim Hijazi, the victim’s brother. Since the event, the Hijazi family has been demanding explanations about the context that led to his death, but has received no response.
“We are told to trust the system, but everything is opaque,” says Ali Hijazi, visibly defeated. “The investigators will know how my brother died, but everything else, how it happened, why it happened, all that, it’s opaque.”
“Getting beaten to death doesn’t happen in two seconds, I think. There’s noise, screams. Why didn’t anyone see or hear that? It looks like a murder in the middle of a forest, but it’s not,” he said.
According to the victim’s brother, the “minimum” would have been “a message from the prison to apologize.” “My brother was under their responsibility. And not a call, not a letter of apology, not an email from them.”
“Difficult to understand”
The 32-year-old man had been provisionally imprisoned since March 28 on charges of extortion and loan sharking. On the day of his death, Mahdi Hijazi learned that he would be released the following Friday, due to lack of evidence for the extortion charge, explains his lawyer Me Danièle Roy. He was simply supposed to plead guilty to the charge of loan sharking, having already served his sentence during his provisional incarceration.
A few hours before being beaten to death, he was moved to a “more controlled” sector, confirms Mathieu Lavoie, president of the Syndicat des agents de la paix en services correctionnels du Québec (SAPSCQ). And this, “without any explanation. It’s hard to understand,” explains his prison lawyer, Me Pierre Tabah.
“What still kills me is that they move him to maximum security. And then after that, this happens. In my head, it doesn’t work,” says Ali Hijazi. “Someone made a mistake and we want to know.” Even in the more controlled sectors, there are no guards in each cell and they are not equipped with cameras, says Mathieu Lavoie.
Another aspect blocking the Hijazis’ mourning: they cannot hold a funeral because of the Sûreté du Québec investigation and the ongoing autopsy. “Right now, we’re supposed to have our brother. Now, what we have is a body bag instead,” says Ali Hijazi.
According to the explanations that the Rivière-des-Prairies detention center provided to Mathieu Lavoie, Mahdi Hijazi was moved to this higher security sector because of his “behaviour, his arrogance,” he says. And because he was “identified as a person who brought drones into the facility,” he adds. According to Mr. Lavoie, the situation resembles a settling of scores, which could be explained by the “debts he had to other inmates.”
Mahdi Hijazi’s family, however, denies the claims of debts and drone trafficking. According to Basim Hijazi, Mahdi and his family do not have financial difficulties. “My brother gave money every month to a disabled person in the neighborhood. He even continued in prison,” he says.
This is not the first time that Mahdi Hijazi has faced justice: in 2020 he was sentenced to two years less a day for arson. Since then, he has rehabilitated himself, assures Ali Hijazi. “He had finished his estimator course and he had his apartment. Things were going well,” he says.
“A huge number” of complaints
For Me Pierre Tabah, “he should have been in the process of being released, not in the process of being kept longer.” The president of SAPSCQ explains however that “even if the person was released the next day, there could be a reclassification if there is a need for additional supervision.”
In the weeks before his death, Mahdi Hijazi filed “a huge number of complaints against the treatment he received from the guards in Rivière-des-Prairies,” explains Me Tabah. The prison lawyer notes, however, that Mahdi Hijazi is not the only one to have complained. “It was generalized in the wing he was in. There are many difficulties with the guards, with the service, with the way they treat them,” he specifies.
Without pointing fingers, Ali and Basim Hijazi still wonder if their brother’s complaints led to his transfer to the more controlled sector of the establishment. A possibility dismissed by Mathieu Lavoie, because the change of sector “is not a punitive measure.”
Beyond getting answers to help them grieve, the Hijazi family also wants answers about the circumstances that led to Mahdi Hijazi’s murder, “to prevent it from happening again.”
The Ministry of Public Security and the Rivière-des-Prairies detention center have not yet responded to our interview requests.