It seems that no-one will be held to account for the death of a black man at the hands of the British state after the three racist and brutal security guards who restrained the Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga were cleared of manslaughter at their trial on 16 December.
Terrence Hughes, Colin Kaler and Stuart Tribelnig worked as detention custody officers (DCOs) for the private security company G4S, subcontracted by the Home Office to enforce deportations. The company is notorious for complicity with torture in the prisons it manages in Israel and South Africa, amongst other crimes. They were accused of forcing Mubenga’s head down and restricting his breathing as the deportation flight prepared to take off from Heathrow in October 2010. Originally they had not been prosecuted: the charges arose from the inquest into Jimmy Mubenga’s death in 2013 at which the jury found, by nine to one, that he had been unlawfully killed.
‘I can’t breathe’
Nearly 100 witnesses submitted evidence to the inquest, which heard how Mubenga had been handcuffed in the ‘rear stack’ position (with his hands cuffed behind his back), and his head forced towards the floor for between 30 and 40 minutes. In an echo of the killing of Eric Garner in New York earlier this year, more than 50 passengers on the flight testified to hearing Mubenga, increasingly distressed, cry out that he could not breathe. When he became ‘unresponsive’ – unconscious – none of the three DCOs nor the cabin crew, all of whom were trained in First Aid, offered any assistance. Jimmy Mubenga was dead before the plane had returned to the stand and paramedics could treat him.
Returning the verdict of unlawful killing in July 2013, the jury foreman said:
‘We find that Mr Mubenga was pushed or held down by one or more of the guards, causing his breathing to be impeded. We find that they were using unreasonable force and acting in an unlawful manner. The fact that Mr Mubenga was pushed or held down, or a combination of the two, was a significant … cause of death. The guards, we believe, would have known that they would have caused Mr Mubenga harm in their actions, if not serious harm.’
G4S – a pervasive culture of vicious racism
The 2013 inquest also heard that:
- the senior deportation officer, Stuart Tribelnig, had received just four weeks’ training from G4S before being put in charge of other officers – training that mainly involved learning how to subdue deportees using ‘pain control’;
- guards only received their hourly pay if a deportation went ahead – whatever the state of the deportee; and
- most damningly, racist texts were routinely circulated between guards.
The coroner condemned what he described as a pervasive culture of racism at G4S which led its DCOs to depersonalise deportees and rob them of their humanity, coupled with a widely held belief that deportees would ‘feign’ illness. One of the G4S guards, Terrence Hughes, had 76 racist texts on his phone which abused black Africans, Asians and Muslims and were racist about immigration. Stuart Tribelnig forwarded texts from his phone using the vilest and most contemptuous language imaginable to describe immigrants. Yet at the trial of the three DCOs the Old Bailey judge refused to let the jury even know of the texts’ existence because they did not have ‘any real relevance’ to the case.
Once again it is clear that black people can expect no justice from the racist British state. Not only have these three racists walked free; the Home Office also decided not to investigate the practices of G4S, despite all the evidence that emerged about its employment practices, brutality and racism. As in the United States, the legal apparatus of the state acts to protect its racist security forces. In October 2014, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to bring charges of perjury and perverting the course of justice against two police officers involved in the cover-up over the death of Sean Rigg in Brixton police station in 2008. The same month, the family of Mark Duggan – shot by police in Tottenham in 2012 – lost an attempt to get the inquest verdict of ‘lawful killing’ overturned. Campaigners were seeking a judicial review on the basis that the coroner misdirected the jury as to what constituted lawful self-defence. There has not been a successful homicide prosecution in Britain for the death of anyone in police, immigration or prison custody for over 30 years. The anger shown by protests in London over over the lack of justice for Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York, United States, needs to be directed also against the racist British state, its racist police and racist immigration laws
