SUE REID's dramatic account of Heathrow deportation centre riot

2022-11-06

Screams, violence, and fires: After 17-hour blackout sparks chaos, read SUE REID’s dramatic account of riot from inside Heathrow deportation centre

Last Friday, pandemonium erupted at Britain’s biggest immigration deportation
Electricity and water had been off for 17 hours as inmates broke up furniture
They used tables and chairs to make fires and crafted them into weapons to fight

When night fell last Friday, pandemonium erupted at Britain’s biggest immigration deportation centre next to Heathrow.

Electricity and water had been off for 17 hours. In darkness, screaming inmates, earmarked for removal from the UK, broke up furniture and banged it on floors and walls.

They used tables and chairs to make fires in the exercise yard and crafted them into weapons to fight each other.

An acrid smell hung in the air as the inmates, failed asylum seekers and convicted criminals, burned bedding.

During the riot at the Harmondsworth centre in west London, staff locked themselves in offices. The interior of double-storey Beech House – for Albanian, Indian, Vietnamese, African and Algerian deportees – was almost completely destroyed.

When night fell last Friday, pandemonium erupted at Britain’s biggest immigration deportation centre next to Heathrow

In a locked induction area for Albanians, a similar violent disturbance took place.

As we can disclose for the first time, the centre – western Europe’s largest deportation facility – was without power from midnight on Thursday until Saturday morning, with no lights or water, no electricity for cooking or heating. Toilets and showers were not working. The power cut was caused by an ‘outage’ in the West Drayton area.

On being asked about the power cut and unrest on Friday evening, Government sources told the Daily Mail we were exaggerating the upheaval. The riot was directly sparked by the lack of electricity and water inside Harmondsworth, say inmates we spoke to.

A 27-year-old Albanian who arrived by boat in early summer as an economic migrant and is now awaiting return to Tirana, said: ‘It was a tense situation. There were staff very jittery, too. We could not even use the toilets. When night came on Friday, we were wandering around in darkness. No one could see anything in the corridors or sitting areas.

‘No one seemed to know what to do. There could have been a mass breakout. It was dangerous.’

One 44-year-old migrant – a stateless man who had lived in Britain for years before he was deported to Belgium, Germany and France only to return twice by boat – kept us informed hour by hour of the events.

The man, an asylum seeker we will call Amir, was removed from the centre yesterday with hundreds of others by riot police after being locked up for 36 hours.

The Mail had monitored Amir’s travels in and out of Britain since 2017 until his arrival at the deportation centre last December.

He watched the Harmondsworth crisis unfold through his cell window, keeping in touch with other inmates by mobile phone, and telling us of the carnage.

One 27-year-old Albanian who arrived by boat in early summer as an economic migrant is now awaiting return to Tirana

He said: ‘The power went off midnight on Thursday. Everyone put up with it at first. It was only when it got dark on Friday that things got bad. There was an eruption. No one could see anything inside. People began panicking. The staff looked terrified.

‘We had had no water, no toilets, no cooked food, no light, no TV, for 16 or 17 hours. Migrants were getting angry. Staff didn’t know what the problem was.

‘I went to my room at nine in the evening on Friday because I could sense trouble was developing. It was then locked for the night as is normal by security staff.

‘Outside fires were burning. Banging, shouting and screaming was going on. That night things got out of control. Beech House was torn apart. The induction block was also under attack. There were fights between groups, mainly Albanians and others. The noise was incredible.’

Home Office minister Robert Jenrick said the rioters would be ‘brought to account’ and deported. He promised that the entire Harmondsworth site was due to be cleared by Saturday night following the riot

The ‘punishment block’ for unruly inmates was damaged.

On Saturday, when the power and water came back on, specialist officers arrived. Amir said: ‘I saw armed riot police. There were 70 outside my window. They took people away in buses with a police escort and flashing lights.

But that didn’t happen. Amir told us from his locked cell before his removal yesterday: ‘Home Office staff seem to be having problems finding where to put 600 or more migrants at short notice.’

The question remains – how could the Home Office expect 600 people to live without water and toilets, no warmth or cooked food for nearly two days without some kind of protest? Government sources told the Mail it was just a little local difficulty. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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