by When Jacqueline Ali came to HMP Long Lartin to see her eldest son, seeing the man on the other side of the bars took her breath away.
Her son, once down on his luck, who dreamed of leaving prison and starting a flower business was huddled up on the floor of a cramped hospital wing cell.
After almost 60 days on hunger strike, Yusuf Ali was stitched up and looked like “a dog with a paw on the floor” – a shadow of his former self.
The 50-year-old, who is serving an indeterminate prison term of what a United Nations expert called “torture”, is said to have starved himself twice in desperation as he loses hope of release never it.
Under the Prisoner for Public Protection (IPP) sentence imposed on him in 2008 for causing serious injury to another prisoner, he was told he must serve at least three years. But almost 16 years later, after five failed parole bids, he’s still inside.
After hearing about Mr Ali’s case, former Justice Committee chairman Sir Bob Neill called on the winner of the July 4 general election to take urgent action to help IPP prisoners.
“This truly sad case illustrates unhappily all the harms that the Justice Committee reports that IPP sentences cause,” he said. “Any new government should act quickly to wipe out this stain on our justice system.”
Mr Ali’s heartbroken mother said he looked “skeletal” when she was allowed to visit him on compassionate grounds at Worcestershire’s high-security prison last January.
A letter from the prison governor, seen by this publication, confirms that she was granted the special visits because he was “very ill” last year.
“When I first went to see him he looked like a starving dog on the floor,” she said. The Independent. “It was just bones on the floor and his face was covered so you couldn’t see it.
“It was scary and heartbreaking. It took my breath away. I told Yusuf if you can hear me, I love you and I completely understand why you did this.”
With his mother’s support, he eventually agreed to medical treatment and was taken to hospital, where he was given three tubes into his stomach. She said he spent a total of 61 days fasting.
On May 23, however, he promised to resume his strike and told his mother, this time, he would see it through to the end.
“He said I can’t take it anymore, I can’t do this anymore,” she said, recalling her last phone call with Yusuf. “He said I’m going to go on hunger strike and I’m not going to quit this time.”
After days of frantically trying to contact the prison, the mother, who struggles with fibromyalgia and complex PTSD and can rarely make the almost 300 mile journey from Bournemouth to visit her son in Worcester, was informed , she was persuaded to end it. hunger strike.
When The Independent contacted the prison service for comment, they denied it was a second strike. It is not known how long he refused to eat this time.
His mother is demanding urgent action to help Mr Ali and the nearly 3,000 other IPP prisoners caught under a sentence she says “damaged” her son.
The controversial sentences – under which offenders were given a minimum prison term but no maximum – were abolished in 2012 amid human rights concerns. But the end of the policy did not affect those already sentenced, leaving thousands to go to prison for years beyond their original prison term.
After a particularly traumatic childhood – the full details of which we have chosen not to reveal to respect the family’s privacy – Mr Ali fell into crime and was first jailed aged just 15 for a series of bookie robberies by teenagers using a stick in a bag as a fake firearm.
He later went on the run for about two years, during which time he became a father, but eventually turned himself in to authorities in 1999, aged 26, and was convicted of additional crimes , including driving offences, robbery and burglary and received an automatic two-strikes life sentence, with a minimum term of five years and seven months. He has been imprisoned ever since.
He was being held at HMP Parkhurst, in the Isle of Wight, when he was sentenced to IPP with a three-year tariff in 2008 for causing serious injury to another prisoner during a fight.
The mother, who believes her son’s conviction is related to PTSD from traumatic events in his childhood, said when he was first given the IPP sentence he was determined to do his time and go home to his son.
But hope soon began to fade as he faced multiple parole hearings with no legal representation as his mental health deteriorated.
Mrs. Ali said The Independent: “We have destroyed it. It was a slow death.
“I’ve seen him go from a lively boy down to a shadow of himself and there’s nothing I can do. The lack of power made me sick. My family is heartbroken.
“It was just horrible. The whole dream was for him to be home in time to be a father to his son but he couldn’t see that boy and he’s 20 now.”
At a hearing in September 2022, the Parole Board noted that Mr Ali had developed a stutter and nervous tics in prison linked to the deterioration of his mental health, but did not recommend his release or move to open conditions.
Among the risk factors they listed in rejecting his release were “loss of hope and a feeling that they have nothing to lose”.
His next parole hearing is due this autumn, but once again Mr Ali has no legal representation.
As he recovered from his hunger strike last year and was gradually reintroduced to a liquid diet, Mrs Ali tried to remind him that he had hope for the future – that his poetry would be published and that he would fulfill his dream of owning a Siberian husky.
She challenged the injustice of IPP sentencing and called for a review of all indeterminate prison terms and wholesale reform of the prison system with a focus on rehabilitation.
She said: “The system let him down. I am destroyed. I’m spoiled for it.
“It’s just the injustice of it. Why is my son treated so badly? Why did they treat him like a monster when they let monsters come out.”
Regarding the IPP’s sentence, she said: “He will need support for the rest of his life. He has terrible anxiety and hears voices.
“IPP is now banned. It is against the law. So anyone on IPP needs to be reviewed.”
The Independent he called for an urgent review of all prisoners serving an IPP prison term. Of the 2,796 IPP prisoners imprisoned, 1,180 were never released and 708 served more than 10 years beyond the minimum sentence.
Almost 90 IPP prisoners died by suicide, including Scott Rider who was given a 23 month prison term and took his own life in despair after spending 17 years in prison.
The architect of the flawed sentence, Lord David Blunkett, is among those who have led calls for reform after admitting he regrets introducing the sentence as home secretary under New Labor in 2005.
He urged the new government to speed up a series of amendments recently passed in the Victims and Prisoners Bill to help prisoners like Yusuf, but the changes to the sentencing exercise that campaigners and the justice committee have called for are lacking .
A spokesman for HM Prison and Probation Service said: “There is no evidence to support staff’s claim of ill-treatment and this prisoner is not on hunger strike.”
