TWO asylum-seekers were jailed yesterday for their part in a riot that reduced the Government’s £100 million flagship immigration detention centre to a smouldering ruin.

Henry Momodou, a 39-year-old Nigerian, and Behar Limani, 27, an Albanian, were sentenced to four years each after a jury found them guilty of violent disorder at Yarl’s Wood detention centre, near Bedford.

Staff at the centre, which is run by the private security company Group 4, were forced to barricade themselves in their offices as a mob, many in home-made masks, brandished chair legs and fire extinguishers as they tried to escape in February last year.

The jury at Harrow Crown Court acquitted three men — Lucky Jacobs, 23, and Kayode Abdul, 24, from Nigeria, and Jgergi Tuka, 25, from Albania — of violent disorder after nearly 26 hours’ deliberation.

Two other men, Ahmed Aliaine, 29, an Algerian described as a “one-man fighting machine”, and Naseem Mosstaffa, 25, from Morocco, previously admitted violent disorder and affray respectively. Aliaine was jailed for 18 months and Mosstaffa for three months.

The three men acquitted are to be deported; those jailed will be removed after serving their sentences.

After the trial, Detective Superintendent Andrew Richer, the officer in charge of investigating the incident, was critical of Group 4 over a witness training programme that it set up for the trial.

“At least one defendant’s directed acquittal can be traced directly back to suspected contamination issues resulting from this ill-advised venture into what appears to be little short of illegal witness coaching,” he said.

He also said that Group 4 had given counselling sessions to its staff against police advice in the weeks after the riot and that it had encouraged staff and inmates to view detainee information records to identify offenders.

Group 4 denied that it had coached any of its staff before the trial. It said that it had supported employees likely to be called as witnesses by appointing a specialist firm to “familiarise them with court process and proceedings”.

The company said that counselling was provided to give emotional and psychological support to those who wanted it and had nothing to do with the presentation of evidence.

During the four-month trial the jury was told that Limani was overheard threatening to kill one of the Group 4 officers at the centre during the disturbances. He also broke into an office and at one stage waved a cigarette lighter at staff, grinning and “apparently enjoying their terror”.

During the serious disturbance, Momodou was said to have broken a reinforced window and helped to throw missiles through it, striking one of the security guards. None of the accused gave evidence but relied on their protestations of innocence in interviews.

Dozens of asylum-seekers, including Limani, fled into the surrounding countryside on the night of the fire, although all but a handful were recaptured. Limani accepted that he escaped but denied taking part in the violence. He maintained that he helped families to flee the trouble and flames.

The rioting erupted at about 8pm after Group 4 security officers detained an hysterical woman asylum-seeker. It took hours before the emergency services were able to regain control of the building and by then millions of pounds worth of damage had been done.

The riot was a heavy blow to the Government’s drive to remove more failed asylum-seekers from the country as it wiped out 36 per cent of accommodation in which people are held before removal.

A four-month police investigation cost the Bedfordshire force up to £5 million. Officers found that there was confusion about who had been detained at the centre because records were destroyed in the blaze. CCTV footage that might have helped was lost because hard drives were kept in the building that burnt down.

The Home Office allowed the centre to be built without a sprinkler system, even though Bedfordshire Fire Service had recommended that one be installed.

The court was told that police and fire officers spent five hours waiting outside the premises on the night of the riot because Group 4 said that it wanted to bring the disturbances under control.

Group 4’s insurers, D.J. Pye 962, a Lloyd’s syndicate, then issued a £97 million claim against Bedfordshire’s Chief Constable under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886. This holds police responsible for damage caused during a riot in certain circumstances. The matter is under negotiation.

The Home Office has not yet decided whether the burnt-out shell will be rebuilt, but the half of the centre that was undamaged will reopen in the autumn. It will eventually hold 400 people. A sprinkler system was being installed at Yarl’s Wood and at the Government’s other asylum detention centres, a Home Office spokesman said.

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