Inquest into death of fit and healthy Angolan deportee exposed string of racist and offensive comments on guards' phones
A protest against the treatment of Jimmy Mubenga outside the Home Office. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian
Jimmy Mubenga spoke softly into his mobile phone from the back of British Airways Flight 77 as it waited on the runway at Heathrow airport. "Hang up, I'll call you back," he told Adrienne Makenda Kambana, his wife of more than 18 years.
It was just after 7.30pm on 12 October 2010 and it was the last time Kambana heard her husband's voice. An hour later Mubenga, a fit and healthy 46-year-old who was being deported to Angola, was dead.
On Tuesday, following an eight-week inquest at Isleworth crown court, a jury found that Mubenga was unlawfully killed after three G4S guards restrained him.
Mubenga and his wife came to the UK in 1994 and Kambana gave birth to their first child – a son – a few months later. His family says that as a student leader in Angola he had fallen foul of the regime and was forced to flee. After a protracted legal battle he was granted exceptional leave to remain in the UK and he and Kambana, who had lived at addresses across London, moved to Ilford in Essex where they set up home with their five children.
In 2006 he was convicted of actual bodily harm and sentenced to two years in prison following a brawl in a nightclub.
After serving his sentence Mubenga was transferred to an immigration detention centre and from then until his death he was in and out of custody as the family fought to stop him being deported.
By the time he put the phone down to Kambana that fight was nearly at its end.
It is common knowledge among detainees that if they can cause a big enough commotion aboard a scheduled flight the captain can ask for them to be taken from the aircraft – and their deportation is delayed.
It was perhaps this knowledge that led Mubenga, in a desparate last effort to get the deportation stopped, to lunge at the G4S guards – Stuart Tribelnig, Terry Hughes and Colin Kaler – as he made his way back to his seat from the toilet.
In the ensuing struggle, Mubenga was forced into his seat and had his hands cuffed behind his back using rigid bars. Passengers on the plane reported seeing the guards heavily restraining Mubenga for more than half an hour as he called out for help. Fifteen witnesses from the plane said they heard him saying he "couldn't breathe", others that he was crying out: "They're going to kill me."
Thomas Buckley, who was sitting a few rows in front of Mubenga, said in a statement read out during the inquest: "As I took my seat I heard a male's voice shouting, 'Let me up, you're killing me. You're killing me. You're killing me. I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe."
In evidence, the guards claimed they had not heard Mubenga saying he could not breathe and insisted he had been resting his head on the seat in front and intermittently forcing it down towards his knees as he was being restrained – a position known to carry a risk of death by asphyxia. Experts say this risk was exacerbated by the guards' decision to cuff Mubenga's hands behind his back.
Counsel for Mubenga's family, Henry Blaxland QC, asked Hughes if he and the other two guards had been trying to "teach Mubenga a lesson" for the struggle on the aircraft.
During a tense exchange Blaxland put it to Hughes that the three guards had been pushing Mubenga's head down in an attempt to keep him quiet and had only "come up with" the story that Mubenga was forcing his own head down to explain what passengers on the plane would have seen.
"Were you trying to come up with an explanation for what you thought people would have seen – a man bent double in his seat?" asked Blaxland.
"No sir," replied Hughes.
Somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes after the struggle began, Mubenga became quiet and the plane began to taxi on to the runway. The guards said they thought he had become resigned to his deportation but soon realised that something was wrong.
Buckley, who was sitting "six to eight feet" away from Mubenga, said he heard the last faint groan from Mubenga about 10 minutes after taking his seat and saw the guards sit him up in his seat.
"I could see clearly his head was leaning to the right, his eyes were wide open and his mouth was hanging open a little bit. I turned to the guy next to the window in [seat] 38K and said, 'I think that guy's dead.'"
The plane taxied back to the stand, where emergency teams were called and Mubenga was pronounced dead a short time later.
In the immediate aftermath, security giant G4S and the Home Office made no mention of the fact that the three guards had forcibly restrained Mubenga in his seat, nor that witnesses had reported him complaining he could not breathe and crying for help.
"We can confirm that a detainee became unwell whilst being escorted on a flight on 12 October 2010," G4S said the following day, adding that he had been taken to hospital, where he had died. The Home Office issued a similar statement.
Initially the investigation into Mubenga's death was headed by detectives based at the airport, who interviewed some of the passengers as they boarded the postponed flight for a second time and chased others by email in the weeks and months after.
Days later, following an investigation by the Guardian which tracked down a number of passengers who expressed concern about the way Mubenga had been restrained, the Metropolitan police's homicide unit took over the inquiry and the three guards were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
Following the arrests, ministers implemented the first temporary moratorium on the use of force to deport foreign nationals. Within six months, Mubenga's case prompted four G4S whistleblowers to give written evidence to parliament about the potentially lethal techniques used by guards at G4S, warning that guards had been playing "Russian roulette with detainees' lives".
G4S said that although it had requested the details of the whistleblowers' allegations, it had not received any specific information. "We would obviously be keen to investigate these allegations but have not been able to conduct a review or take any action without seeing the evidence," said a spokesperson.
In May 2011 a new security company – Reliance – took over the Home Office removals contract. The three guards remained suspended but, along with other staff, were transferred to the new firm.
A month later it emerged that one of those under investigation – Hughes – had used his Facebook page to post an apparently mocking photograph of two Asian men, assumed to be detainees, on an aircraft. Under the image a number of his Facebook friends – including other guards accredited by the Home Office to escort detainees – posted a string of racist and offensive comments. Two serving guards were suspended.
But during the inquest it emerged that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Phones seized from two of the guards – Hughes and Tribelnig – following Mubenga's death had scores of racist "jokes". Hughes' phone had 65 texts containing what the coroner Karon Monaghan, QC, said contained "very racially offensive material".
Hughes, who insisted he was not "racially hostile" and claimed he had not read all the texts – although they had all been opened and some had ben forwarded – was asked to read a selection out. A hush fell over courtroom eight at Isleworth crown court as he began.
"Did you know that the words race car spelt backwards says race car? That eat is the only word that if you take the first letter and move it to the last it spells its past tense ate? And have you noticed that if you rearrange the letters in illegal immigrant and add just a few more it spells out fuck off and go home you freeloading, benefit-grabbing, kid-producing, violent, non-English speaking, cocksuckers and take those hairy-faced, sandal wearing, bomb-making, goat-fucking, smelly raghead bastards with you. How weird is that?"
In July 2012 – twenty-one months after Mubenga's death - the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Hughes, Trebelnig and Kaler would not face charges.
Gaon Hart, senior crown advocate in the CPS special crime division, said there were "conflicting witness accounts" about the manner of the Angolan's restraint, although counsel found there was a "breach of duty" in the way Mubenga was held. "It is not enough to tell a jury what may have caused a person's death; I have to have sufficient evidence that there is a realistic prospect of proving it to them beyond reasonable doubt, and in these circumstances the evidence did not satisfy that test."
At the time Mubenga's wife said the decision left the family "distraught".
"He was crying for help before he was killed. We can't understand why the officers and G4S are not answerable to the law as we or any other member of the public would be."
Breaking down as she gave evidence to the inquest, Kambana added: "He did not deserve this kind of death … he died asking for help and thinking: 'What have I done to deserve this?'"
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