G4S – praag.org

G4S guards accused of migrant’s death found innocent

Three security guards from the controversial security firm G4S have been cleared of manslaughter, despite accusations they killed a 46-year-old man by forcibly restraining him on a charter airline flight.

Jimnmy Mubenga, from Angola, died on the 12 October 2010 after being restrained by guards at Heathrow Airport while on a British Airways flight. He was due to be deported to Angola from the UK.

The guards, Terrence Hughes, 53, Colin Kaler, 52, and Stuart Tribelnig, 39, were accused of killing Mubenga by forcibly pushing his head down and restricting his breathing.

The court heard fellow passengers said Mubenga told the guards he couldn’t breathe. Mubenga was already handcuffed and held down with a seatbelt during the restraining.

In a statement issued on the guards behalf, Alex Preston from Olliers Solicitors said: “Terrence Hughes, Colin Kaler and Stuart Tribelnig are delighted to have been found not guilty so quickly. They bitterly regret the death of Mr Mubenga but have always said they were trying to do a very difficult job in difficult circumstances to the best of their ability.”

“They are grateful to the judge and jury for the care they have taken resolving these sad events,” the statement added.

The hearing comes weeks after the death of Eric Garner in New York, an African-American who also suffocated despite telling police that he couldn’t breathe whilst being restrained.

Mubenga came to the UK with his wife Adrienne Makenda Kambana in 1996, but faced extradition after being involved in a violent nightclub brawl in 2006.

Mubenga’s lawyer, Mark Dennis QC, also told the court he was co-operative before boarding the extradition flight, but became upset after he spoke on the phone in the plane’s toilet cubicle.

“Each officer would have known from their training and from common sense that keeping someone in such a position was likely to cause a person harm yet they did so over a prolonged period and did so ignoring shouts from Mr Mubenga that he was in trouble,” Dennis said.

“‘I can’t breathe’ shouts were heard by many a passenger seated further away.”

Following the court hearing, a number of human rights organizations expressed their disappointment, including Amnesty International UK, who said the outcome ignored the ‘multiple failings’ that led to Mubenga’s death.

The Migrants Rights Network also said the outcome would not provide comfort to immigrants facing deportation from the UK.

“Once again a migrant has lost their life in detention, and once again no one will ultimately be held to account,” said MRN’s action director Jerome Phelps.

“There needs to be a fundamental review of the detention and deportation system, to ensure that the UK does not needlessly jeopardize the lives of people who have come here in search of a better future.”

Pentagon hands Guantanamo to G4S

A British private security company that has been accused of numerous human rights violations has been handed a $118 million deal by the Pentagon to provide “operating support services” for the Guantanamo Bay naval base that houses the U.S. military’s notorious prison.

The Department of Defense announced earlier this week that G4S has been granted the contract to provide services that include “family housing, facility management, facility investment, other (swimming pools), custodial, pest control, integrated solid waste management, grounds maintenance and landscaping, base support vehicles and equipment, electrical, wastewater, water, and limited facilities support functions.” The statement did not mention any duties relating to the Guantanamo Bay prison, which currently holds 149 men without charge or trial.

But Kat Craig, legal director for UK-based legal charity Reprieve, told the Independent that “G4S must make clear exactly what the nature of its work at Guantanamo is.”

“Any company which associates itself with the legal black hole which is Guantanamo Bay has serious questions to answer,” she added. “Guantanamo has been the site of detention without trial and brutal mistreatment for over a decade—even now, Reprieve’s clients are being subjected to torturous force-feedings in response to their peaceful protests.”

British authorities are currently investigating G4S for fraud, following evidence that the company over-charged for the electronic monitoring of incarcerated people, including alleged prisoners who were actually dead.

The largest “private security” company in the world, G4S became the target of a global boycott campaign following revelations of its role in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people. G4S signed a deal with the Israeli Prison Authority in 2007 to provide “security” for five prisons that hold large numbers of Palestinians—many of them children—who are denied due process. These facilities have proven track records of at times deadly torture and abuse. Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat was tortured to death at Israel’s Megiddo prison in February 2013—where G4S provides security and surveillance systems.

The company fell under international criticism when 46-year-old Angolan man Jimmy Mubenga died in 2010 while in the custody of G4S guards while being deported from Britain. Witnesses say the guards used excessive force as Mubenga cried for help approximately 50 times.

G4S also faces numerous allegations that people detained in its Mangaung prison in South Africa face widespread torture, including forced injections and electric shocks.

“G4S has a horrible human rights track record,” Ramah Kudaimi of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation told Common Dreams. “It would be much better if the U.S. did not award contracts to companies with horrendous track records and itself stopped human rights abuses at Guantanamo.”

Source: commondreams.org

Britain’s private army, G4S

G4S is the world’s third-largest private-sector employer. The British multinational security services company headquartered in Crawley, United Kingdom, is the world’s largest security company measured by revenues.

Contractors from the security behemoth cleaned up after an explosion in a crowded souk in South Sudan.

G4S is based near London and is traded on the stock exchange there. Though it remains generally unknown to the public, it has operations in 120 countries and more than 620,000 employees.

The security company is engaged by the United Nations mission sometimes to handle difficult tasks.

In recent years it has become the third-largest private employer in the world, after Walmart and the Taiwanese manufacturing conglomerate Foxconn.

The fact that such a huge private entity is a security company is worrying.

Most G4S employees are lowly guards, but a growing number are military specialists dispatched by the company into what are delicately known as “complex environments” to take on jobs that national armies lack the skill or the will to do.

Pierre Booyse, an Afrikaner and ex-SADF colonel, for one, did not dwell on the larger meaning. For him, the company amounted to a few expatriates in the Juba headquarters compound, a six-month contract at $10,000 a month, and some tangible fieldwork to be done.

He felt he was getting too old to be living in tents and mucking around in the dirt, but he liked G4S and believed, however wearily, in the job.

As he set out for the west, his team consisted of seven men—four de-miners, a driver, a community-liaison officer, and a medic.

The medic was a Zimbabwean. All the others were soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the S.P.L.A., now seconded to G4S, which paid them well by local standards—about $250 a month.

At their disposal they had two old Land Cruisers, one of them configured as an ambulance with a stretcher in the back.

Merely two years after official independence, South Sudan was fracturing as a country, but the names of the Souk Sita victims could be inserted into the U.N. forms, and for G4S the day had been a success.

Source: Vanity Fair

G4S forged documents used to return asylum seeker

G4S is a UK-based private security contractor that is wildly profitable and rapidly expanding. They’re also terrible. They totally blew security for the London Olympics (but not before illegally harassing photographers).

They’ve been stripped of their contract to run a South African prison after total incompetence and torture.

They’ve had new contracts with the UK government frozen while they’re being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office for criminal overbilling (and despite this, the Home Office is quietly trying to expand their contract to abuse house migrants facing deportation).

Now, they’re facing criminal charges for forging migrants’ documents. A high court judge found that three G4S employees representing the secretary of state forged documents used to deport an asylum seeker who claims he was tortured on his return.

The three officials behaved disgracefully, the judge said, adding: “When agents of the state falsify documents it undermines, if not fatally then certainly very seriously, the trust of the people in the operation of the rule of law.

“It makes no difference if, as here, the agents are private contractors to whom the secretary of state has outsourced her powers. Corruption by state officials is insidious and corrosive and it is the duty of the authorities where it is found to root it out ruthlessly.”

Mostyn referred his findings of forgery and providing false witness testimony to the DPP and the attorney general. However, he added that his “finding as to the turpitude of the agents of the secretary of state” did not detract from the “lack of credibility of the claimant”, and he dismissed the appeal. – boingboing.net

Police task force subdue hostage takers

The four Mangaung prison inmates who held a woman hostage were successfully overpowered by a special police task force, national police commissioner Riah Phiyega announced on Thursday.

The woman, an official of G4S which manages the Mangaung prison, was rescued just after 10pm on Wednesday when the task force entered the cell occupied by the hostage-takers and their victim.

“Ultimately, at 10.16 pm last night, a tactical assault on the area where the hostage-takers had barricaded themselves was conducted by members of the elite Special Task Force,” said Phiyega.

Police said no shots were fired during the operation and the hostage, who was held for 13 hours, did not sustain any injuries during the rescue operation.

“We can confirm that the hostage [situation] at Mangaung Correctional Centre has been concluded,” G4S Africa head Andy Baker said in a separate statement.

Local police said the woman was unharmed but was nevertheless referred to Rosepark Hospital for a medical check up and treatment.

“We are extremely pleased to report that our employee was not physically harmed… and is receiving care and counselling support,” Baker said.

Free State police spokesman Brigadier Billy Jones said the four inmates were arrested and would be charged with kidnapping and attempted murder of two G4S workers, who were injured earlier on Wednesday.

Jones said that after the woman was accosted and overpowered by the four inmates, they dragged her into one of the cells and locked themselves in.

In the process two male employees, who tried to rescue their colleague were stabbed in the arms and legs by the hostage-takers.

They were apparently armed with sharp objects, believed to be scissor parts.

Jones said the two prison officials were treated at the scene and were reported not to be in a serious condition.

The hostage-takers were serving time for rape, murder and robbery.

Phiyega said in the eventual rescue the task force members acted in accordance with their training and used minimum force to rescue the woman.

She thanked all police officers involved in the peaceful resolution of the hostage situation. – Sapa