Jimmy Mubenga was on BA flight 77 to Angola in October 2010. He was chaperoned by three G4S guards and was overheard by other passengers crying out “They’re going to kill me” and alerting his captors to the fact he couldn’t breathe. In their verdict, the jury found that the guards were aware of the fact that they would have been causing Mr Mubenga harm by restraining him in the way that they were and that they were knowingly using disproportionate force that directly impeded Mr Mubenga’s breathing contributing to his death on the runway.
Adrienne Makenda Kambana, Jimmy Mubenga’s wife, said her late husband had been treated “worse than an animal”, while the counsel for Mubenga’s family suggested that the G4S guards had been trying to teach Mubenga a lesson by acting in the way that they did.
The three guards – Stuart Tribelnig, Terry Hughes and Colin Kaler – were arrested for their actions but were subsequently released after the Crown Prosecution Service decided against pressing charges. The CPS have now said they will reconsider this decision in light of the verdict delivered by the inquest.
The inquest heard that two of the three guards were found to have a string of racist jokes on their phones while one man, Terry Hughes, was found to have what the coroner had described as “very racially offensive material” stored on his mobile.
The Guardian is also reporting that there are still systemic problems with the way in which security companies carry out their contracts with the Home Office for the deportation of asylum seekers. G4S no longer run the contract that lead to their contact with Jimmy Mubenga, but guards for Tascor, the current contractor, have raised concerns that there is still an inadequate level of training for new recruits. One anonymous source even reported that a number of detainees had been assaulted by guards on a recent charter flight to Lagos.
The failings of private security companies have been manifold and have in the past prompted four whistleblowers to give written evidence to parliament about the manner in which restraining techniques used by G4S play “Russian roulette with detainees’ lives”.
This case is a tragic reminder of the way in which the United Kingdom allows people in their care to be treated and is, RAPAR fears, simply the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mistreatment at the heart of the UK asylum system.
All Information contained in this article is sourced from two guardian articles that can be read here and here. Any inaccuracies are as a result of these reports.