Robert Stewart

File:Stewart.jpg

Robert Stewart (born 1980) is a British racist responsible for the 2000 murder of his cellmate, British-Pakistani Zahid Mubarek.

Biography

Stewart was born in 1980 in Greater Manchester. He had a long history of criminal offences, starting when he was suspended from secondary school at age 13 for arson. By the time of the murder, he had been charged with 73 criminal offences and received 19 convictions.

While imprisoned in young offender's institution HMP Feltham for actual bodily harm, Stewart's behaviour became increasingly bizarre. On one occasion he flooded his cell, smeared excrement over the walls and covered himself in margarine before attempting to hang himself. On another occasion he ate a bar of soap and a metal screw. He was often seen talking to the walls of his cell and staring at other inmates. One of his friends at another prison stabbed another inmate to death in June 1998 and Stewart was suspected to have talked him into it, but he was never charged. While in yet another prison, HMP Altcourse, Stewart was diagnosed as a psychopath by mental nurse Chris Kinealy, but no action was taken.

In February 2000, Stewart was convicted of vehicle theft and sentenced to 175 days in prison. He was also bound to await trial over a harassment charge. Stewart arrived back at HMP Feltham in 8 February. He was given the only spare bed, in a joint cell with British-Pakistani Zahid Mubarek, who was serving a 90-day sentence for theft and drugs offences. In the early morning of 21 March, Stewart became irritated when Mubarek asked him to turn out the light and threw his underpants over the lamp. A few minutes later, he jumped up, grabbed a table leg which had broken off two weeks earlier and battered Mubarek over the head as he slept. Stewart hit Mubarek seven or eight times before pressing the alarm. Prison guards found him standing over Mubarek covered in blood and claiming that he had had an accident. Stewart was immediately moved to solitary confinement, where he washed the blood off his clothes and wrote a message on the wall reading "Manchester just killed me padmate", signing off with a swastika. Mubarek died after being rushed to Charing Cross Hospital.

Stewart was charged with murder. It was found that during his past time in prison multiple concerns had been raised about his behaviour, including after the death of the other inmate. It was also found that Stewart was a known racist, leading to questions about why he had been placed in a cell with Mubarek. Stewart had a Ku Klux Klan symbol tattooed on his forehead and just two days before the murder a letter of his had been intercepted in which he had talked about killing non-white people. Despite this he had been allowed to remain in Mubarek's cell. His security file had also not been sent to Feltham despite his violent and dangerous behaviour. A public inquiry into the murder ultimately concluded that Zahid Mubarek had been killed both by Robert Stewart and by institutional failings in the prison system. Stewart, meanwhile, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder.