What happened
Felix Wamala was 46, a Ugandan torture survivor with mental illness. In 2011 the Home Office tried to remove him from the UK. On Christmas Eve, 24 December 2011, five officers from Reliance, later renamed Tascor, took him to Heathrow for a Qatar Airways flight to Doha.
The High Court later found the detention unlawful. The officers threatened him to get him onto the aircraft. He told them, correctly, that they were acting unlawfully. They laughed and said they were “not bothered”.
In the aircraft aisle they pinned him face down and used an unauthorised “pain compliance” technique. He was in intense pain and had difficulty breathing. He had known Jimmy Mubenga, who died during a similar restraint the year before, and the court accepted that he believed he was going to die.
He was then dragged off the aircraft to a waiting escort van by his cuffed arms, crying out in pain, with the escorts standing over him shouting. The van’s CCTV, played in court, was described by the judge as “shocking”.
The outcome
Walker J gave judgment on 20 June 2017. He found serious assault, the use of an unauthorised and dangerous pain-control technique, and a flagrant disregard of the Home Office contract’s express prohibition on any head restraint.
He awarded a total of £48,000 ([2017] EWHC 1461 (QB), as reported by Deighton Pierce Glynn): £30,000 ordinary damages, £8,000 aggravated and £10,000 exemplary. Exemplary damages are punitive, and unusual. He described the practice as “outrageous” and “utterly unacceptable”.
The court noted that the Home Office had taken no action against the company or the officers.
What went wrong
Three failures, each documented.
The first was the restraint. A face-down hold in an aisle with no exit, plus a pain technique outside the approved manual, on a man with a known psychiatric history.
The second was the record-keeping. Officers made “highly improper” amendments to a UK Border Agency document and then disputed in court that they had done so. One gave “manufactured testimony”. Another “constructed an account”.
The third was the account given afterwards. Tascor told the Home Office that Wamala had been violent and aggressive. That was false, and it had “severe” consequences for how the immigration authorities treated him later.
What it teaches
The prohibited technique is prohibited because it kills. A head restraint ban exists because of restraint asphyxia, and a “pain compliance” method that is not in the manual is not a control option. It is unlawful force.
In a confined space, the only defensible plan is the one written down, used as written, and recorded honestly afterwards.
The third failure outlives the flight. What is written about a detainee afterwards decides how the state treats him for years, and it deserves the same care as the hold.
Questions for the room
- You are the officer who knows the technique is not in the manual. What do you say, and to whom, before the flight boards?
- The company told the Home Office he was violent. Who checks that account, and what does it cost the detainee when nobody does?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed, on two sources. The findings, quotations and the damages figures are reported by the claimant solicitors, Deighton Pierce Glynn, and by the judgment itself. The BAILII page returned an anti-scraping block when checked for this pack, so the solicitors’ account is the readable source here.
Judgment given 20 June 2017. The officers are not named on this page.
Our vulnerable and volatile persons training covers acute behavioural disturbance and the point at which hands are used.
Sources
- BAILII, Wamala v Tascor Services Ltd [2017] EWHC 1461 (QB), 20 June 2017
- Deighton Pierce Glynn, 22 June 2017, “‘Outrageous’ and ‘utterly unacceptable’: High Court. Tascor staff seriously assaulted torture survivor”
Reviewed 20 October 2026.