Zahid Mubarek

Zahid Mubarek was a British Asian teenager who was brutally murdered by his cellmate on March 21, 2000, at the Feltham Young Offenders' Institution in southwest London. He was already inside Feltham when his killer, 20-year-old Robert Stewart - a known racist and psychopath - was transferred to his cell.

Mubarek was a first-time prisoner and little different from other young men in a cycle of drug abuse and small-time criminality. The murder has resulted in wider questions being asked about the Prison Service's treatment of minorities - not least from those who see parallels with the handling of Stephen Lawrence's murder by the Metropolitan Police.

Campaigners say that many key questions still remain unanswered:

*Was the teenager's placement in that cell accidental, negligent, or worse still, deliberate?

*Was the killing pre-meditated, or a seemingly random urge of violence?

*Were others laterally involved in the death; be they staff who had fears but did not act, or inmates who wanted to see a fight?

One of the most serious allegations expected to be investigated is the thus-far unsubstantiated claim that institutionally racist prison officers provoked fights between black and white inmates - fights upon which they placed bets.

The Incident

Mubarek, who was trying to sleep ahead of his release the following morning, complained the light in the cell was too bright; Stewart responded to this by throwing a pair of underpants over the cell lamp. At 3.35am on the morning of March 21, Stewart took a table leg that he had already separated from the table and began battering his cellmate over the head. Mubarek was hit between seven and eleven times before Stewart pressed the alarm and waited for the prison officers to arrive. Once they did, he was immediately moved to a nearby cell where he washed his blood-stained hands and clothes before a forensic team could isolate any evidence. All the while, Mubarek was on his way to Charing Cross Hospital in west London, where he died.

Back at Feltham, Stewart took the heel of his rubber shoe and scrawled a swastika on the wall before scratching the following message: "Manchester just killed me padmate. RIP OV M1CR"

The Inquiry

The unprecedented decision by the Law Lords to order Home Secretary David Blunkett to hold a public inquiry into the murder was heralded a huge victory for the dead teenager's family. Despite the family's four-year wait for the inquiry, some evidence is already in the public domain after the Commission for Racial Equality conducted its own investigation.

Evidence presented at the later murder trial revealed Stewart to be a seriously disturbed individual; he had "RIP" and a cross tattooed on his forehead. The inquiry stated that Zahid Mubarek died because of a combination of his cellmate's racism and failures of the Prison Service - it is often claimed that had he been white, the murder might well not have happened.

On February 8, 2000, Stewart was allocated a double cell with the soon-to-be-released Mubarek as Feltham faced crowding problems. Six weeks later Mubarek was dead.

"Aggressive Behaviour"

Following his death, some of the other inmates described Stewart's behaviour at Feltham as "strange, weird and aggressive."

One inmate had this to say about him: "If he used to lose at table tennis he would smash his bat on the table. He was aggressive. He would sit and stare at people. I have had him stare right into my eyes. When I've asked him what he's looking at he would just reply 'nothing'; it was crazy."

Similar cases

*Stephen Lawrence
*Michael Menson
*Christopher Alaneme
*Sharon Bubb

External links

* [http://www.zahidmubarekinquiry.org.uk Official Enquiry Homepage]