'Inmate died in game of prison gladiators'

An Asian prisoner was killed by his racist cellmate because guards were playing a game of " gladiator", an inquiry heard today.

Officers at Feltham young offender institution are said to have purposefully paired unsuitable prisoners together - "one black and one white, one big and one small" - and placed bets on how long it took for an assault to take place.

Today a prison chief told how he secretly called the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) to reveal that he believed teenager Zahid Mubarek was a victim of the shocking "game". Mubarek was battered to death with a table leg at Feltham in 2000 by known violent racist Robert Stewart.

In an inquiry into his death, a telephone transcript today revealed a secret conversation between the CRE and Duncan Keys, assistant secretary of the Prison Officers' Association (POA).

Mr Keys said: "That kid was murdered for other people's perverted pleasure. Mubarek was killed because people thought it would be funny to see what would happen when they put a young Asian lad in with someone who wanted to kill Asians."

Mr Keys said he had been told of the practice by a colleague who said that staff at the young offender institution found the games "amusing".

He claimed he was "haunted" by the revelation - but when he approached senior figures at the POA he was blanked. He said: "I was effectively told to shut up." Mr Keys said he only learnt about the "gladiator" games four years after

the death of Mubarek, but instinctively linked the two together.

He said he felt he had to reveal the secret because "if ultimately it was proved to be correct, there could be staff that were involved in a conspiracy to murder". Mr Keys went on to describe in detail the "gladiator" game.

He revealed to the Central London inquiry: "The game consisted of pairing unsuitable prisoners together in one cell. The prisoners could be one black and one white, one big and one small, one bully paired with another bully. Whatever the combination, the intention-was to see whether or not the two fell out and came to blows. Officers were betting on the outcome of such pairings."

Mr Keys was told about the game after the independent Mubarek inquiry had been set up. He said he immediately approached the general secretary of the POA, Brian Caton and other senior figures.

"He had told me that I should do nothing and the union would do nothing. I had considerable concerns that if I raised this in a public way I might lose my job. As a result I decided to make an anonymous call to the CRE." He pointed a finger at Nigel Herring - chairman of the Feltham branch of the POA and who is still a Feltham officer.

In the phone transcript to the CRE, Mr Keys said: "He's the guy that when this independent inquiry gets going needs to be put on the spot because he thinks it's funny. He thinks it's clever that that game was going on. The usual wall of silence has gone up through the prison service as you would expect because of this incident." Mubarek, from Walthamstow, died hours before he was due to be released from a sixweek sentence for theft and interfering with a vehicle.