Murder of Zahid Mubarek

Mubarek's family trace their roots to Pakistan. His grandfather served in the Pakistan Army Corps of Engineers who in 1960, migrated with his family to East London.[1] Zahid was born in 1980 and was the eldest of three children; his father worked as a manager in a factory for 28 years. The family came from a Muslim background and had no previous confrontations or records with the police before Zahid's case.[1]

Mubarek was a first-time prisoner and was five hours from the end of a 90-day sentence.[2]

According to HM Inspectorate of Prisons: "His brushes with the law occurred to fund a growing dependence on drugs. Over a period of less than 10 months, he committed 11 offences, mostly for breaking into cars and stealing from them. He was given a number of opportunities to co-operate in the search for a suitable community sentence, but he failed to keep many appointments which had been made for him to meet members of the community drugs team and other agencies, and on two occasions he did not turn up at court. Eventually, on 17 January 2000, he was sentenced to 90 days’ detention in a young offender institution for a total of five offences, and a few weeks later he received a similar term to be served concurrently for four further offences. He served the whole of his sentence at Feltham."[3]

Mubarek, who was trying to sleep ahead of his release the following morning, complained the light in the cell was too bright; Stewart responded to this by throwing a pair of underpants over the cell lamp. At 3.35am on the morning of 21 March, Stewart took a table leg that he had already broken off the table two weeks earlier and battered his sleeping cellmate over the head. Mubarek was hit between seven and eleven times before Stewart pressed the alarm and waited for the prison officers to arrive. Once they did, he claimed his cellmate had an accident and was immediately moved to a nearby cell where he washed his blood-stained hands and clothes before a forensic team could isolate any evidence. All the while, Mubarek was on his way to Charing Cross Hospital in west London arriving four hours later, where he died.

The unprecedented decision by the Law Lords to order Home Secretary David Blunkett to hold a public inquiry into the murder was heralded a huge victory for the dead teenager's family. Despite the family's four-year wait for the inquiry, some evidence is already in the public domain after the Commission for Racial Equality conducted its own investigation.

Evidence presented at the later murder trial revealed Stewart to be a seriously disturbed individual. The inquiry stated that Zahid Mubarek died because of a combination of his cellmate's racism and failures of the Prison Service.

On 8 February 2000, Stewart was allocated a double cell with the soon-to-be-released Mubarek as Feltham faced crowding problems. Six weeks later Mubarek was murdered in a racially motivated attack by Stewart.

A film was made from Robert Stewart's viewpoint and released in 2014, titled We Are Monster.

A short story was written for Mubarek by Nikesh Shukla: "A Tale of British Justice".

The verbatim theatre named, 'Gladiator Games' by Tanika Gupta also speaks of Mubarek's case.

• Murder of Stephen Lawrence
• Murder of Ross Parker

• Official Inquiry website