Mubenga Verdict

It’s more than four years since Jimmy Mubenga died. He was an Angolan man, who died as a result of being forcibly retrained on a deportation flight. This week his guards, who worked for G4S, were cleared of a manslaughter charge, but that’s not the big news. The important bit is that the guards circulated aggressive racist jokes, but these were not revealed to the jury. At an earlier hearing, the coroner described this as “very racially offensive material” but somebody thought that exposing this stuff might get in the way of a clear judgement, so the jury were left in the dark. which is where most of us find ourselves, so far as immigration procedures are concerned. We’re turning into a nasty, narrow country which sees the rest of the world as an enemy to be kept at bay. It doesn’t have to be like this.