Since November 2018, the quartet took their lives after making hazardous journeys to the UK

A teenage Eritrean refugee was the fourth from his friendship group to take his own life after arriving in the UK, an inquest hearing has revealed.

Mulubrhane Medhane Kfleyosus, 19, was found dead on 18 February 2019 in Milton Keynes. It is the fourth death in the space of 16 months among one friendship group of unaccompanied young male Eritrean asylum seekers and refugees.

Osman Ahmed Nur, 19, was found dead on 10 May 2018 in a communal area of a young people’s hostel in Camden, north London. Two of Osman Ahmed Nur’s friends took their lives in London just months before he did. Filmon Yemane had recently turned 18 when he killed himself in November 2017. Alexander Tekle, also 18, took his own life a fortnight later, in December, a year after he had arrived in the UK hidden in the back of a refrigerated lorry.

These tragic young deaths have highlighted the extreme challenges and traumas faced by young, unaccompanied asylum seekers forced to flee their countries and make hazardous journeys across continents alone. It illustrates how arrival in a safe country like the UK is not the end of their problems.

Coroner Tom Osborne, sitting at Tuesday’s hearing in Milton Keynes coroner’s court, asked the legal teams for Kfleyosus and for Milton Keynes social services, an interested party in the case, to make written submissions about whether the inquest should look at the role of the state in the teenager’s death rather than just the circumstances of it.

Kfleyosus’s family want the scope as broad as possible, while Milton Keynes social services argued that it should be narrower.

Paul Clark, the barrister for Kfleyosus’s family, said that two of the coroners examining other deaths in this friendship group of young Eritrean refugees were communicating about common issues with these deaths.

At the inquest into Ahmed Nur’s death in August, coroner Mary Hassell directed the London borough of Camden – where he died – to alert other local authorities of the increased risk of suicide among young unaccompanied Eritrean asylum seekers.

Helen Johnson, the head of the Refugee Council’s children services, said: “There is nothing more heartbreaking than learning that a young person has beaten the odds and survived unimaginable hardship in their home country, endured an utterly perilous journey to the UK, only to take their own life once finally safe here.”

The charity works with many unaccompanied child asylum seekers and refugees.

“Other issues are also at play here,” Johnson said. “Our asylum system sees people waiting months, even years for a decision on their asylum claim, leaving them in utter limbo, unable to move on. Many children are also forced to go through the trauma of having their age disputed, which can see them deprived of the vital services they desperately need as children and in accommodation entirely unsuitable to their age.”

The Children’s Society produced a report in June 2018 which highlighted how the daunting and bewildering experience many of these children go through can have detrimental effects on their mental health.

The full inquest into Kfleyosus’s death has been scheduled for March 2020. A pre inquest review hearing into the death of Tekle takes place at Westminster coroners’ court on Friday, while Ahmed Nur’s inquest is part-heard and is due to resume in November.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.