Solidarity-Demo: Wednesday 1 March

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/03/334894.html

You are really churning them out these days. Really good stuff and just what we need to do regular newsreals at screenings. Perhaps it's time to consider putting together an organised UK video newsreal project.

Guard
Att: Ms.Anne Owers, CBE., Chief Inspector of Prisons,
HM. Inspectorate of Prisons,
Ist Floor, Ashley House, 2 Monck Street
LONDON SW1P 2BQ

Brutal treatment by a male Colnbrook Security Guard Heathrow Airport, Saturday 18 March 2006

Dear Ms Owers,

1. I wish to report an incident on Saturday evening in which a male Security Security Guard brutally manhandled Mariah Rugobya, a young Ugandan deportee on Ethiopian Airways Flight No. ET 701, enroute for Entebbe via Addis Abba.

2. I understand that other passengers on the aircraft raised objections to the Pilot about the physical manhandling of another deportee, Grace Kanyaroharo from Ruanda, who was being given double-thumb, pressure-point application to the sides of her neck.

3. The Pilot came to see for himself what was going on behind the black curtains covering the rear seats where the two deportees were in handcuffs so arranged that Mariah, an orphan victim of rape and torture in Uganda was unable to wipe the tears from her cheeks as she quietly sobbed.

4. When the Pilot ordered off the aircraft all the Colnbrook Security Guards with their two detainees, one male guard "lost his cool", angrily seized Mariah's handcuff chain and dragged her along the aircraft aisle, no doubt embarrassed at having to come out into public view. This violence was totally uncalled-for, as Mariah, so desperately wants to be back on British soil, where she arrived with her twin Judith in 2003, as orphaned 17-year old, escapees from the Civil War in Uganda after their father, mother and brother were all murdered by the Ugandan and the Rebel Armies.

5. Earlier this month I asked the responsible Home Office Ministers and senior civil servants to send me a copy of any Guide lines for forcible expatriation procedures, in view of the Colnbrook plans to return the young twins separately to Uganda in two different weeks; surely an unnecessary procedure, especially as it often involves Heathrow removal teams arriving at the Bedford Detention Centre in the early hours of the morning. The Home Office have not replied: either they have no Guidelines for the private security companies whom they employ on contract or they are reluctant to have these procedures open to public scrutiny.

6. I would therefore request an urgent inquiry into this incident, which can be verified by the independent testimony of (a) the Ethiopian Airways Manager, Heathrow, (b) the Pilot of Ethiopian Airways Flight No. ET 701 on that date and (c) the passengers (traceable, with a little more trouble from the Passenger Manifest List).

7. I have to ask:-
(a) How can such a brute be employed in a job requiring sympathetic understanding?
(b) What was his previous employment record ?
(c) What training was he given ?
(d) What character assessment was made when he was recruited by GSL to the Colnbrook Removals team?.
(e) How was this incident written up in the Colnbrook records ?

8. I enclose copies of correspondence on the previous treatment of the Rugobya twins to explain why I find myself so disturbed by this recent incident adding to the long trauma they have had to endure in their young lives.

Yours sincerely,
Brian Wilson.