AS THE Tories push ahead with their anti-refugee laws, an overlooked public inquiry has been unravelling some of the worst abuses inside Britain’s detention regime. 

Concluding earlier this month, the Brook House inquiry into alleged mistreatment at the removal centre near Gatwick laid bare a shocking pattern of abuse against detainees by those responsible for their care.

Chaired by Kate Eves, the probe painted a disturbing picture of a chaotic and dangerously understaffed facility, then run by security firm G4S, where a culture of racism and the dehumanisation of detainees was allowed to flourish unchecked thanks to the indifference and inaction of senior management.

Overarching that harmful culture was an uncaring Home Office, whose focus on deportations and cost-cutting came at the expense of vulnerable people’s wellbeing and safety.

This picture came to light over the eight weeks of hearings through the wide-ranging testimonies of former detainees and G4S staff at Brook House to Home Office officials and inspectors.

The probe, which began hearing evidence last November, aimed to determine what took place at the site between April and August 2017 — the period when Callum Tulley, a Brook House custody officer turned whistleblower, was secretly filming for BBC Panorama.

The programme, which exposed shocking physical, verbal and racial abuse of detainees by staff, sparked a scandal that saw over a dozen G4S employees, including Brook House’s ex-director Ben Saunders, forced to resign or sacked, and eventually triggered the current inquiry. 

The probe heard how from the very outset, Brook House was a wholly inappropriate environment for administrative detainees.

Opened in 2009 and built to the security specifications of a category B prison, men held at Brook House live under a harsh regime, locked into shared rooms with an open toilet, affording them no privacy or dignity.

The conditions are in stark contrast to the government’s legal requirement to provide a “relaxed” immigration detention regime.

The harm inflicted on detainees languishing in this prison-like environment indefinitely without charge or trial is profound, as the men’s harrowing testimonies to the inquiry painfully showed. 

One, a Nigerian national who was detained unlawfully at Brook House for three months, described existing in a general state of fear in “disgusting conditions,” including putrid toilets caked with dried faeces, overflowing bins and sheets covered in blood and sweat stains.

The wings would often ring out with the screams of detainees being dragged without notice to deportation flights, events that created a climate of fear for other detainees.

The experience led him to “question my worth as a human being and changed me as a person,” he said.

Having entered Brook House with no mental health conditions, he left with PTSD, anxiety and depression.

His traumatic experiences were echoed by the other men who bravely recounted their ordeal to the inquiry. 

Former staff likewise described the facility as “hell on Earth” for both detainees and employees, and an “absolute hellhole to work in.”

But G4S employees played an integral part in detainees’ suffering.

Tulley, now a full-time BBC reporter, described a “dehumanising” and “us and them” culture towards detainees among Brook House staff.

This culture manifested in unacceptable and disturbing behaviour; custody officers mocking mentally unwell men, the prolific and casual use of derogatory and racist language and even outright aggression.

Such was the scale of dehumanisation that one ex-employee claimed some staff members viewed detainees as a “subspecies.” 

Despite their medical training, doctors and nurses on the site were not immune to the toxic culture at Brook House, which also ensnared new recruits.

Self-harming or suicidal detainees were often viewed as manipulative or attention-seeking, leading to failures in their care.

Former custody officers told the inquiry how they were woefully ill-equipped to deal with the acute levels of vulnerability and distress among detainees.

Without the tools to respond to such behaviours, staff became “desensitised” to detainees’ suffering and often resorted to using force and solitary confinement, as explained by Dr Rachel Bingham of the Medical Justice charity. 

The inquiry’s use of force expert Jonathan Collier analysed 93 instances of staff using force on detainees during the five-month period.

One of the most shocking cases dissected by the probe was the throttling of a suicidal detainee by custody officer Yan Paschali.

Footage of the incident showed Paschali digging his thumbs into the detainee’s neck while whispering: “Don’t fucking move, you fucking piece of shit. I’m going to put you to sleep.”

When questioned on this, the ex-G4S employee, who now works for the Home Office, claimed his actions saved the detainee’s life (Collier heavily disputed his account, branding the use of force “unjustified, disproportionate and potentially dangerous.”) 

Paschali’s attitude spoke to a wider lack of remorse among the team of staff at Brook House in 2017.

When pulled up on the casual use of abusive language, the majority of G4S staff dismissed it as banter, and as a way to fit in.

Desperate attempts to deflect blame saw several ex-G4S employees accuse the BBC of manipulating them or having edited the footage for “dramatic effect.”

The closed ranks attitude of former G4S staff to the inquiry, even five years on from the damning Panorama programme, is indicative of a culture of silence and “hostility to snitches” described by Tulley and others.

This prevented staff raising concerns. Officers who did speak out often became the target of bullying themselves.

In one case, custody officer Owen Syred told the inquiry how he was bullied for over a year after reporting a colleague for using racist language.

Syred said he did not receive any support from senior management, including Saunders, despite reporting the bullying, making him feel “all alone,” while the accused did not face disciplinary action.

This lack of action no doubt encouraged the toxic culture of silence and impunity at Brook House, evidenced later on when Syred did not report another officer, who he witnessed repeatedly punching a detainee, out of fear he would be ostracised once again. 

These were not the only examples of inaction against staff accused of mistreating detainees or bullying. Two officers accused of abuse, as well as smuggling spice into the facility were known by senior management, including Saunders, as far back as 2015. 

Former colleagues described the beleaguered director as “absent” and someone who was more preoccupied with meeting contractual requirements and keeping stakeholders happy than the welfare of detainees. 

Notably, Home Office officials accepted that detainees had been mistreated and that there had been widespread failures in the safeguarding of vulnerable men.

One official, Ian Castle, went further, telling the inquiry: “I think, if you spend more than 24 hours in Brook House, you’re going to develop mental health issues. It’s not a nice place to be.”

But they stopped short of admitting that there had been a systemic failure in 2017. 

However it’s clear that the horrific mistreatment of detainees inside Brook House in 2017 did not happen in a vacuum.

Lawyers for the detainees and campaigners were keen to stress that the abuses were not merely the actions of rogue officers, but a product of institutional factors and the government’s hostile environment policies, designed to make the lives of the supposedly undeserving unbearable. 

Stephanie Harrison QC, representing several former detainees, argued that these aggressive policies cannot be divorced from the conditions and attitudes of Brook House officers towards detainees.

Meanwhile repeated failures by the Home Office to fix its “dysfunctional” safeguarding system left vulnerable men with severe mental health conditions, experiences of torture, trafficking and sexual abuse, wrongly exposed to detention, and they continue to be to this day. 

With the hearings concluded, chair Kate Eves will now consider the evidence for her final report, expected to be released within the next 12 months.

In it she will decide whether the treatment of detainees in 2017 constituted a breach of their human rights.

But campaigners and former detainees are hoping she will go beyond the events at Brook House in 2017.

A string of scandals have long pointed to widespread issues around mistreatment, poor conditions and safeguarding failure across Britain’s detention estate.

Harrison urged the inquiry to succeed where countless past inspections and reports have failed to root out these problems.

“Tinkering with the machinery of this cruelty will not end it,” she stressed, highlighting that only “radical change” can ensure that such abuses are not repeated. 

This not only requires the closure of Brook House for good, but a rethink of the practice of immigration detention as a whole, she urged. 

The Borders Bill makes this even more pressing. Plans in the proposed legislation, currently before Parliament, could see a huge expansion in the use and length of immigration detention in Britain, rights groups have warned. 

While proposals to open “reception facilities” for 8,000 asylum-seekers, based on the model of Napier Barracks (described as a “quasi-detention facility” by MPs and peers), risks creating yet more environments where the potential for abuse can flourish. 

The harrowing evidence to the inquiry should put to bed any notion of expanding Britain’s cruel detention regime. Instead it strengthens the case for the very opposite — bringing an end to the barbaric practice of immigration detention once and for all.