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Deportee death: charges possible

Three security guards could face criminal charges after an inquest ruled a father-of-five was unlawfully killed on a plane as he was deported from Britain.

Jimmy Mubenga, 46, died in hospital after he was "pushed or held down" with "unreasonable force" by the G4S officers on a British Airways flight to his native Angola.

Now prosecutors are to reconsider a decision last year not to bring charges against the men after the original police investigation.

The jury of seven men and three women at Isleworth Crown Court in west London recorded a majority verdict of nine to one of unlawful killing after four days of deliberations following an eight-week hearing.


The G4S guards - Terence Hughes, Stuart Tribelnig and Colin Kaler - told the inquest they restrained Mr Mubenga when he attacked one of them soon after they accompanied him on the plane at Heathrow in October 2010.

During the struggle he was handcuffed with his hands around his back, sat down in a seat and had his head pushed down. Mr Mubenga died of cardio-respiratory collapse, where the heart stops beating and a person stops breathing, the inquest found.

Prior to his deportation Mr Mubenga and his wife, Adrienne Makenda Kambana, had been living in Ilford, east London, after arriving in the UK from Angola in 1994.

Mrs Kambana said outside court her late husband was treated "worse than an animal" on the flight. Calling him a "good man" and a "loving husband", she called for deportations to be better monitored.
