given access to his security files. Mubarek, who was trying to sleep ahead of his release the following morning, complained the light in the cell was too bright; Stewart responded to this by throwing a pair of underpants over the cell lamp. At 3.35am on the morning of 21 March, Stewart took a table leg that he had already broken off the table two weeks earlier and battered his sleeping cellmate over the head. Mubarek was hit between seven and eleven times before Stewart pressed the alarm and waited for the prison officers to arrive. Once they did, he claimed his cellmate had an accident and was immediately moved to a nearby cell where he washed his blood-stained hands and clothes before a forensic team could isolate any evidence. All the while, Mubarek was on his way to Charing Cross Hospital in west London arriving four hours later, where he died. Despite Stewart's attempt to destroy evidence, he was charged with Mubarek's murder. Prison guards reported that when they arrived at Mubarek's cell Stewart had been standing over him covered in blood and holding a large table leg. He had also written a message on the wall of the cell he was moved to reading "Just killed me padmate", signed off with a swastika. Stewart was convicted of murder in November 2000 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Inquiry The unprecedented decision by the Law Lords to order Home Secretary David Blunkett to hold a public inquiry into the murder was heralded a huge victory for the dead teenager's family. Despite the family's four-year wait for the inquiry, some evidence is already in the public domain after the Commission for Racial Equality conducted its own investigation. Evidence presented at the later murder trial revealed Stewart to be a seriously disturbed individual. The inquiry stated that Zahid Mubarek died because of a combination of his cellmate's racism and failures of the Prison Service. See also Murder of Stephen Lawrence Murder of Ross Parker References External links Official Inquiry website 2000 in London 2000 murders in the United Kingdom Deaths by beating in the United Kingdom Deaths by person in London Hate crimes History of the London Borough of Hounslow March 2000 crimes March 2000 events in the United Kingdom Murder in London