Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

Preface to the Second Edition xxi
appalled by the fire and spent much of their time helping other detainees, nurses
and even Group 4 employees to escape from it. At their trial in 2003 much
of Group 4’s evidence was thrown out; charges were dropped during and before
the trial; Henry Momadou and Behar Limani were convicted of violent
disorder, were given four years, are incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs, and
are appealing; Ahmed Aliane pleaded guilty to violent disorder, was deemed
to have already served his time but is still in Wormwood Scrubs, after 29 months
in various prisons and numerous suicide attempts; Nasseem Mosstaffa pleaded
guilty to affray, having thrown a half-empty plastic bottle at a distant line of
officers in riot gear, was deemed to have spent his three-month sentence
but, having spent time in five different prisons, decided to accept ‘voluntary’
removal. The very active local Campaign to Stop Arbitrary Detentions at Yarl’s
Wood, SADY, has commented as follows:
The Home Office showed a total disregard for human life by detaining people at Yarl’s
Wood in unsafe conditions operated for private profit by Group4, described by the prosecution
in court as a ‘national laughing stock ever since they first blundered into the
field of private custodial services’. It is the Home Office and Group4 who should be
prosecuted for Unlawful Imprisonment and Recklessly Endangering Lives. Their
responsibility for what happened at Yarl’s Wood is significant. Firstly the Home Office
arbitrarily detained men, women and children who are not accused of a crime, indefinitely
– in a wooden framed building they decided not to fit sprinklers to. Then Group4
pinning a 51 year old woman to the ground, dragging her along the floor, triggering
the whole incident, which they went on to grossly and negligently mis-manage –
including delaying access to fire fighters and police, and locking detainees into the burning
building. Not enough, they went on to hinder the defence of those picked for prosecution
– Group4 subverted the investigation process by a series of ‘wholly improper’
actions and the Home Office deported most of the detainee eye witnesses.
Group4 were under investigation for Corporate Manslaughter, and under threat
by police of being interviewed about obstruction ...
The Fire Brigades Union, from the start, stated publicly that their members
had been prevented from entering the burning building for over an hour,
confirming what detainees, who desperately wanted them to come and rescue
them, had told us. At a public meeting in London in September 2003, a fire
controller confirmed this and stated that her colleagues had also asked to be
allowed at least to break ground-floor windows so that detainees could escape
the fire, and been refused. According to Nigel Leskin, one of the defence
lawyers, there was also clear police video evidence that detainees, who were
kept outside in below zero temperatures with children and babies for many
hours, desperately appealed to the lines of uniformed officers to help people
they could see trapped inside, and were told to ‘go and get them yourselves’.
Andy Gilchrist, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, commented as
follows at the Trades Union Conference Annual Congress in Brighton in
September 2003:
Of course the main conclusion to be drawn from this incident is that asylum seekers
were treated as sub-humans. So the building was put up on the cheap, the staff super-