A SUICIDAL immigration detainee at Brook House who was throttled by a guard in a horrific incident caught on film has told an inquiry he thought he was going to die. 

The Egyptian national, who arrived in Britain in 2014 as an unaccompanied child asylum-seeker, was held for four months at the then G4S-run detention centre near Gatwick in 2017. 

During that time the former detainee, known as MA, says he was subjected to serious mistreatment and abuse from staff.

Some of this abuse was documented in a BBC Panorama programme, including footage of a G4S staff member throttling MA while threatening: “I’m going to put you to sleep.”

Recounting the incident in evidence to the Brook House Inquiry on Monday, the former detainee said force was used after he tried to commit suicide. 

“I remember this time that I thought I was going to die, that the man doing this to me was going to kill me,” he said in a written statement read out by his lawyer Alex Goodman. 

“I remember having a panic attack and hyperventilating. I felt like I was having a heart attack. After being strangled, no-one tried to help me up. I was there for about 30 minutes, maybe slightly more.”

After the incident, MA said he had been visited by a doctor who was dismissive of his ordeal and did not try to establish what had taken place. “I nearly died the previous day, but no-one did anything.”

The former detainee said he continues to suffer flashbacks from this day, which left him feeling more suicidal than before. 

“I don’t think that the force was reasonable. In that situation when someone is trying to end their own life, you need someone to come and help you,” he said. “But the officers don’t do that. They use force, they bend you and squeeze you. They make you feel more pain.”

The inquiry heard that at one point during his detention, MA was making “near daily attempts at suicide and self-harm,” according to medical notes. But he said staff told him that he was self-harming for attention.

“This made me feel that no-one would take me seriously, like they didn’t care whether I lived or died. I felt that animals in a zoo were treated better than I was.”

On one occasion he said a nurse told him that he would be kept in Brook House for longer if he continued to self-harm. 

MA has argued that he was unlawfully detained at Brook House due to his mental health problems. 

The Brook House inquiry was set up in 2019 to investigate alleged abuse uncovered at the site in the 2017 Panorama documentary. 

The second round of hearings, due to run for six weeks, will continue to look at allegations of abuse as well as the culture at Brook House.