Unwanted, Unnoticed: an audit of 160 asylum and immigration-related deaths in Europe MALTA SNAPSHOT: Malta’s policy of automatic detention of asylum seekers, in breach of EU and international law means old, young and vulnerable are locked up in prisonlike conditions – sometimes on army bases like Safi – for lengthy periods. Children are held with adults, with no access to school. In open reception centres, small trailers house up to eight people.87 • Ifeanyi Nwokoye (29), 04/2011 A Nigerian asylum seeker, Nwokoye died after escaping from the Safi Barracks detention centre. He was recaptured, and allegedly beaten by five guards, including a soldier from the Maltese Armed Forces. A government inquiry set up to investigate his death recommended that all detention centre officials should be trained in first aid. In February 2014, two guards were charged with Nwokoye’s murder. The trial was continuing at the end of December 2014.88 • Mamadou Kamara (32), 30/06/2012 A Malian asylum seeker, Kamara died of severe injuries, believed to have been inflicted by beating on his recapture after escaping from Safi detention centre. Three detention officers were charged with his murder. An independent inquiry was ordered by the prime minister’s office, and reported in December 2014. The trial of the three officers has not begun, although in February 2015 a soldier was jailed for eighteen months for covering up the killing. Kamara left a Maltese girlfriend and seven-month-old daughter.89 NETHERLANDS SNAPSHOT: Detention conditions for asylum seekers in the Netherlands have been condemned as too like criminal incarceration by Amnesty International among others, and in 2013 led to a wave of hunger strikes in protest at institutionalised neglect, abuse and violence.90 • Allan Koomson, 22/02/2010 A Ghanaian arrested at the end of 2009 for working without a visa, Koomson spoke to his sister in the UK from a detention centre on 14 February 2010, with no apparent health problems, but a week later he was on life support, and then his family were told he was dead. Although the Dutch authorities offered his family damages and an apology, they have refused to disclose the cause of his death, which remains a mystery.91 A demonstration to protest the deaths of Ifeanyi Nwokoye in March 2011 and Mamadou Kamara in June 2012, both allegedly beaten by soldiers at the Safi Barracks detention centre in Malta after attempted escapes. • Unidentified man (42), 29/07/2010 An undocumented Pakistani migrant died IRR | European Research Progamme Briefing No. 10 19