C.4 D1527 in April and May 2017

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1. D1527 was born in Egypt.¹ He told the Inquiry that he came to the UK in January 2014 to claim asylum and that he had experienced “horrible abuse and torture in Egypt”.²
2. D1527 had several vulnerabilities. On 12 April 2017, Ms Karen Churcher, a Registered Mental Health Nurse (RMN), completed a mental health assessment of D1527. During this assessment, D1527 disclosed that he was a victim of torture, was taking medication for depression, had recently self- harmed and had active suicidal ideations. He described to Ms Churcher how he planned to kill himself and stated that he “just wants to die”.³ D1527’s extremely low mental state was recorded contemporaneously in his medical records as persisting throughout his stay at Brook House. He struggled to sleep, suffered from flashbacks, regularly committed acts of self-harm (including food and fluid refusal) and tried to commit suicide.⁴
3. In this chapter, I consider the degree to which three separate events that took place throughout April and May 2017 are capable of amounting to mistreatment of D1527:

• 24 April 2017: D1527 was on constant supervision. He was being supervised by Detention Custody Officer (DCO) Kalvin Sanders, who later asserted that he had bent D1527’s fingers back as D1527 attempted to harm himself.
• 25 April 2017: D1527 attempted to kill himself by use of a ligature and then by using his hands to strangle himself. As a number of officers restrained him, DCO Ioannis (Yan) Paschali put his hands around D1527’s neck and applied pressure. D1527 was also verbally abused by Mr Paschali, Detention Custody Manager (DCM) Nathan Ring and DCM Stephen Loughton. This incident became a centrepiece for the BBC’s Panorama programme.
• 4 May 2017: D1527 jumped onto the safety netting (netting installed as a measure to protect an individual from falling from a balcony) on D Wing. He was later forcibly moved to the Care and Separation Unit (CSU).

1. DL0000144_001 para 1[↩]
2. DL0000144_0058 para 141; DL0000144_045 para 106 He was detained at Brook House from April 2017 to June 2017.[↩]
3. CJS001002_033[↩]
4. CJS001002_030-055[↩]