Asian prisoner beaten to death in UK
Shyam Bhatia
Oct 26, 2000 14:50 Hrs (IST)
London: A 19-year-old Asian prisoner was only hours from being released
when his white "racist" cellmate beat him to death, a jury at Kingston
Crown Court here was told.
Zahid Mubarak was fast asleep when 20-year-old Robert Stewart attacked
him with a table leg inside the Feltham Young Offenders Institution in
West London. He died a week later on March 28 after suffering severe
head injuries and brain damage. Stewart has pleaded not guilty to the
murder.
Prison officer Malcolm Nicholson told the court, "I noticed that Stewart
had a table leg in his right hand. He looked shell-shocked or on
something. I asked him, 'what have you done?' He said, 'It was an
accident Guv.'"
The jury was told how Mubarak from Walthanstow, East London, had been
hit at least seven times and suffered massive head injuries. He also
received a fractured forearm and finger from trying to protect himself
from the blows.
Stewart was later moved to another prison cell where a prison officer
later found writing on the wall that read, "I have just killed my
cellmate". A swastika had been scrawled on another wall.
John Nutting, the prosecutor in the case, told the court how Stewart and
Mubarak had shared the same cell for six weeks before Stewart's
murderous assault. "He had a mixture of motives. They included
frustration, racial hatred and perhaps envy at the imminent release of
his cellmate. While his cellmate was lying down, defenseless, asleep, he
attacked, cowardly and brutally causing his death," Nutting said.
Nutting described some of the "crudest and most flagrant racist" letters
Stewart had written weeks before the killing. In one of them he vowed he
would kill his cellmate so he could be transferred to another prison
"where there are fewer blacks and Asians." He added, "I will bleach my
pillows and sheets white and make a Ku Klux Klan outfit and walk out of
my pad with a flaming crucifix."
In another letter he wrote, "I'm going to nail bomb the Asian community
of Great Norbury. It's all about immigrants getting smuggled into here,
Romanians, Pakis, niggers, chinkies, taking over the country and using
us to breed half-castes. Going to nail bomb Bradford, Moss side and
Glodwick and all the non-white areas. I don't like the way these
Romanian refugees are coming here begging. I hate foreigners and
non-whites."
India Abroad News Service
Other Links
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UN report on racism puts UK in the dock
Asians, blacks face racism in Britain
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