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UK: Deportee death verdict

01 May 1995

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In June an Old Bailey jury acquitted three police officers of the manslaughter of deportee Joy Gardner. The jury heard how officers from the Aliens Deportation Group and the Extradition Squad handcuffed Ms Gardner to a belt around her waist, strapped her thighs and ankles together with two further belts and then, as she lay trussed up on the floor, wound thirteen feet of adhesive tape wound round her head and face as a gag. Neither Ms Gardner nor her solicitors had been told that the latest representations to the Home Office pleading for her to be allowed to stay had been rejected or warned that she was to be removed, and when Ms Gardner tried to use the phone, an officer unplugged it. The Aliens Deportation Squad was unheard of until Joy Gardner's death in August 1993. It transpired that the group had operated for years to support immigration officers in the removal of "potentially violent or disruptive" deportees, and had developed a little arsenal of "restraint" equipment, including the makeshift gags, which were still in use years after a warning that their use outside an aircraft was probably unjustifiable. Independent 16 & 18.5.95.

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