Immigration custody deaths need open, independent investigation - Liberty

Robertus Grabys, an asylum-seeker from Lithuania, hanged himself in immigration detention on the morning he was due to be deported from the UK. An official investigation - only now available after a lengthy battle to secure its publication - has found critical failings in the care and
supervision of Mr Grabys, who was known to suffer from a depressiveillness.


Mr Grabys, an active member of the communist party, fled Lithuania in 1998; he died in Harmondsworth asylum detention centre in January 2000. The Home Office proved extremely reluctant to release the report into his death - it took 18 months for the family to be granted a copy of the
>report, followed by a six-month battle with Home Office to get agreement for publication. This ended only when Liberty, the lawyers for Mr Grabys' family, issued a letter before action threatening Judicial Review (and copied it to the Director-Generals of the Prison Service and Immigration
Service and the Treasury Solicitor).

The report cites insufficient care; - a hopeless lack of procedures to deal with people at risk of suicide on the part of the private company then running Harmondsworth (they apparently ceased to do so not long after);- problems with overall immigration detention procedures relating to suicide and self-harm - poor communication at several points regarding his depressive illness
key points where lawyers/interpreters were absent from vital interviews/not informed of key decisions etc (sadly not unusual).


Mona Arshi, the Liberty lawyer for the Grabys family, said:"Government has said suicide in detention is "everybody's problem" - but
tackling this problem needs open investigation and honest admission of the
facts. We've had to fight months to get that for Mr Grabys' family.

"While other areas improve, those in charge of immigration detention seem determined to muddy the waters and hide tragic incidents like this from the public gaze. Too many suicides and attempted suicides in immigration custody go unnoticed outside these institutions; lessons are not learned
and the way is left open for future tragedies.

"Deaths in immigration custody must be openly, independently investigated, if conditions are to improve and future deaths are to be prevented. ".

Mr Grabys was 50 when he died. He was a father of two - a son and daughter. He was divorced but had remarried. Before he left Lithuania he had been self-employed in a kiosk which sold milk products. He also apparently had a degree in Agriculture.
He had claimed asylum on the grounds that he was persecuted in Lithuania because he was an active member of the communist party. He also had a history of depressive illness.


NOTES
Last week, Liberty published a research report on the investigation of deaths in custody (funded by the Nuffield Foundation; see elsewhere on this website), which made 21 key recommendations for change. These included independent investigation, openness, greater availability of documents to the bereaved family, and the establishment of an overarching standing commission to lessons are learned and good practice shared. All these recommendations apply equally to immigration custody.