Supporters of Kevan Thakrar gathered at the High Court on 25 and 26 April to express solidarity with his struggle against the oppression that he and others face in prison. Kevan was bringing a challenge against his placement in the segregation unit of Belmarsh prison, effectively in solitary confinement, where he is held in his cell for 23 hours a day, with no contact with other prisoners, limited access to a small walled exercise yard and no access to education, gym, work or religious services.
Kevan received a life sentence in 2008, after he was convicted under the discredited Joint Enterprise doctrine, of murder and attempted murder, for which he maintains his innocence. Since 2010, Kevan has been held in the Close Supervision Centre (CSC) system, as a punishment for defending himself against prison officer brutality in HMP Frankland. CSCs are prisons within prisons with each unit designed to hold no more than 10 prisoners considered to be the most ‘dangerous and disruptive’ in the system. He has been subjected to racist and Islamophobic abuse from other prisoners, as well as to that already inherent in the prison system itself. His challenge to this racist abuse resulted in an earlier court judgement in his favour and the admission by the Ministry of Justice that his rights under Articles 3, 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated in every prison in which he has been detained since 2012.
If being in CSC units were not already restrictive enough, since April 2021, Kevan has been held in isolation in a specially designated cell within the segregation unit at HMP Belmarsh, without being given adequate reasons why or what he needs to do to progress out of the segregation unit or any meaningful review being conducted into his detention within these conditions.
In the most recent case, the Court heard how being held in solitary confinement has caused Kevan’s mental health to deteriorate and has compounded his existing diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress, which he suffers from due to mistreatment by prison officers and the conditions of his detention, leading him to have serious thoughts of suicide. Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, raised Kevan’s case with the British government in 2021, saying that he was concerned that the use of prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement that Kevan is experiencing amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and even torture.
Kevan has been systematically tortured since 2010 and has retained the strength and political commitment to resist and hold the state to account in improving prison conditions not just for himself, but for all prisoners. His struggle is an arduous one. If, as supporters hope, this case is successful and the judge finds that being held in solitary confinement without explanation or due process for so long amounts to torture, this will be a victory. However, he will then get out of the segregation unit only to be returned to a CSC unit where the battle for him to progress back to an ordinary wing in the mainstream prison population will continue.
Rose Mackenzie Lewis
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 294, June/July 2023
