MANDEL: Man found NCR in killing Toronto community leader can’t travel internationally — yet

Ontario's highest court upholds decision by Ontario Review Board that denies Osama Filli an increase in privileges 12 years after community leader Nahom Berhane was fatally stabbed

Published Nov 04, 2026  •  4 minute read

Nahom Berhane was stabbed to death in 2014.

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A man found not criminally responsible for the stabbing death of a beloved Toronto community leader won’t be able to jet off to the U.K. and Saudi Arabia after all.

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Ontario’s highest court has upheld a decision by the Ontario Review Board that denied Osama Filli an increase in privileges that would allow him passes for international travel. Since the 2014 stabbing of Nahom Berhane, Filli hasn’t even made it out of a psychiatric hospital, so everyone — saving the patient and his lawyer — agreed it was premature.

But it wouldn’t be unheard of — earlier this year, the ORB allowed Ayanle Hassan Ali, found NCR on three counts of attempted murder for a March 2016 knife attack at a Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre in Toronto, to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca with his father and meet a potential bride his dad found for him in Somalia.

Stabbed community leader twice in the back

Filli came to Canada from Saudi Arabia as a refugee in December 2012. Less than two years later, on Sept. 27, 2014, the 23-year-old homeless man armed with a knife fatally stabbed Berhane twice in the back as the father of two turned to leave a confrontation outside a Danforth cafe.

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Berhane, 34, a leader in the Eritrean community and health promoter at Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services, had dreamed of becoming Toronto’s first Black mayor.

Filli fled the scene. The following day, he was located at the YMCA Men’s Shelter on Queen St. W. and arrested for second-degree murder.

Insisted he acted in self-defence

Through the years of psychiatric assessments that followed, Filli insisted he acted in self-defence. On Oct. 1, 2019, Superior Court Justice Maureen Forestell found him not criminally responsible of manslaughter due to a mental disorder. With his diagnoses of schizoaffective disorder, alcohol use disorder and gambling disorder, the judge found he was likely suffering from a paranoid delusion at the time.

“Mr. Filli subjectively believed that he was in danger of being killed or kidnapped but that belief was not objectively reasonable,” Forestell found.

He’s been under the jurisdiction of the ORB ever since, with his case reviewed every year to determine whether he still poses a serious risk and to consider the least restrictive conditions that will still protect the public.

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Since 2023, Filli has been under a detention order at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) with privileges up to living in the community in housing approved by the hospital. At the time of his annual hearing in October 2025, he’d still been unable to find appropriate housing. An allegation that he’d recently assaulted another patient in a park while out on indirectly supervised pass wasn’t helping his cause.

Well-regarded volunteer: CAMH

The panel agreed Filli still posed a significant threat but the search for community housing should continue. CAMH reported he’d had a very good year, was compliant with his anti-psychotic medication, very active in programming and was a well-regarded volunteer in the community. But while he accepts that he has a mental illness, Filli still insists he acted in self-defence.

As for the alleged assault, it had happened just three weeks before the hearing, but there were no charges and Filli’s suspended passes into the community were later restored.

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His psychiatrist told the ORB hearing last year that he wasn’t opposed to Filli’s international travel as long as safeguards were in place — and only after a period of successful community living with 10 or more months of prolonged mental stability.

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The board decided against allowing Filli to travel abroad.

“Mr. Filli’s passes are currently suspended and the opportunity to live in the community and satisfy the criteria for the granting of such passes is not expected to arise in the near future, especially given the uncertainties surrounding the allegations stemming from the Oct. 5 incident,” they concluded.

It sounds like it was the right call.

A few months later, Filli was accused of being violent and head-butting a security officer in the teeth while being moved into a seclusion room — staff said he’d ignored a request not to smoke in front of the nurse’s station. His psychiatrist told a hearing in May that he demonstrated an elevated risk of violence and aggression and was the angriest he’d ever seen him.

As of the spring, his community passes had been suspended again.

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