A senior Home Office official has repeatedly apologised for shortcomings that led to the killing of a “gentle and polite” man in immigration detention, at an inquest into his death.

West London coroner’s court is exploring the role of the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, health professionals and detention centre subcontractors in the death of Tarek Chowdhury, from Bangladesh. The 64-year-old was killed by Zana Assad Yusif, 33, from Iraq, at Colnbrook immigration removal centre near Heathrow in December 2016.

Yusif, who was well known to mental health services and had 16 previous convictions for 33 different offences, beat Chowdhury to death just two days after the latter arrived in Colnbrook. Chowdhury had lived in the UK for 13 years and was detained by the Home Office as an overstayer when he attended a regular reporting session. Yusif arrived in the UK inside a lorry at the age of 17.

Philip Riley, the Home Office’s director of detention escorting service in immigration enforcement, apologised several times for failures in the case during his evidence at the inquest.

A second Home Office official, Ian Davies, , risk assessor for the department on time served foreign national offenders, was asked by Chowdhury’s family’s counsel Nick Armstrong: “It’s just a spectacular system failure?” Assistant coroner Richard Furniss also asked if the Home Office was responsible for a system failure.

“Yes, I would say so,” Davies said.

A key issue to emerge during the inquest has been the failure of the Home Office, the prison service and other agencies to share sufficient information about foreign national offenders who serve a prison sentence, as Yusif did, and are then considered for transfer to an immigration detention centre and deportation.

Riley said improvements had been agreed after Chowdhury’s death, including the sharing of information through a system known as Mercury key. However, Furniss said the system had not yet been rolled out, partly because of IT compatibility issues, more than two years after the killing.

The jury heard evidence that the prison service was under considerable pressure at the time of the incident to move foreign national offenders to immigration detention centres wherever possible.

Evidence from internal Home Office files emerged revealing that Chowdhury was not detained because he had a history of offending or absconding – he had neither – but because his file was not processed in time to place him in a non-detained category. The records showed that another reason for detaining him was because he might make a human rights claim based on his family life in the UK, which could present a barrier to removal.

“He should never have been detained in the first place. Do you see the tragedy?” said Armstrong.

“I see the tragedy. It’s such a tragic case for the family,” Riley replied. “On this occasion with tragic consequences that I can only apologise for, we didn’t get it right.”

Riley said that, since the killing, there was a significant increase in the number of Home Office staff inside detention centres assessing risk and “lessons learnt” sessions were now being held.

“We are keen to turn the spotlight on our processes if there’s a chance we are getting something wrong.”

He said officials were having “mature conversations” about these issues and he accepted that systems at the time were not sophisticated enough to pick up patterns of behaviour such as those exhibited by Yusif.

Yusif pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility because of his mental health problems at a trial at the Old Bailey in London in May 2017. He was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

The inquest continues.



