How Jimmy Mubenga was killed

Submitted by AWL on 30 May, 2013 - 1:14

Angolan journalist Jimmy Mubenga repeatedly called for help during the 35 minutes he was handcuffed from behind and bent forwards in his aeroplane seat during an attempted forced deportation in 2010, an inquest has revealed.

Despite the corroborating evidence of 21 other passengers and crew, the three G4S guards responsible for restraining him claim not to have heard him, and that he position he was in (with his head lower than the seat-back tray of the seat in front) was self-inflicted.

It has also emerged that one of the guards forwarded racist jokes from his mobile phone before the incident.

The three G4S guards involved in forcing Jimmy onto the flight were arrested on suspicion of criminal offences but later released. They have told the inquest of the violent restraining techniques they are taught to use by G4S, and of the target-driving system they worked under whereby they had a particular quota of successful deportations to meat. G4S was operating the contract for the UK Border Agency.

Jimmy's death exposed the brutality at the heart of the British immigration system. Any deportation is an act of violence; hiring trained thugs to perpetrate actual physical violence against deportees who fear for their lives if they are forced back to their countries of origins is only a grim logical extension of the entire system of immigration controls.

• For background, see here.

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