When Jacqueline Ali arrived at HMP Long Lartin to see her eldest son, she gasped when she saw the man on the other side of the bars.
Her witty, happy son, who had once dreamed of getting out of prison and starting a floristry business, was curled up on the floor of a cramped cell in the hospital wing.
After nearly 60 days of hunger strike, Yusuf Ali was emaciated and looked like “a starving dog lying on the ground”, a shadow of his former self.
The 50-year-old man, who is serving a suspended indefinite prison sentence that a UN expert described as “torture”, is said to have starved himself twice in desperation as he lost hope of being freed.
He was told that he would have to serve at least three years in prison as part of an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence given to him for seriously injuring another prisoner in 2008. But almost 16 years later, he remains inside after five unsuccessful parole requests.
After hearing Mr Ali’s case, Sir Bob Neill, former chairman of the Justice Committee, called on the winner of the July 4 general election to take urgent action to help IPP prisoners.
“This extremely distressing case sadly illustrates all the harm that the Justice Committee reports warned IPP sentences caused,” he said. “Any new government must act quickly to erase this stain on our justice system.”
Mr Ali’s heartbroken mother said he looked like a “skeleton” when she was allowed to visit him on compassionate grounds in a high-security Worcestershire prison last January.
A letter from the prison warden, seen in this publication, confirms the private visits were granted to him because he was “critically unwell” last year.
“When I first went to see him he looked like a greyhound starving on the ground,” he said Independent. “He was just bones on the ground and you couldn’t see him because his face was covered.
“It was shocking and heartbreaking. It took my breath away. I just said to Joseph, if you can hear me, I love you and I totally understand why you’re doing this.
With his mother’s support, he eventually consented to medical treatment and was hospitalized and fed through a tube inserted into his stomach. She said she fasted for 61 days in total.
However, he promised to restart the strike on May 23 and told his mother that this time he would see it through to the end.
Recalling her last phone call with Yusuf, the woman said, “He said I couldn’t take it anymore, I couldn’t do this.” “He said that I would start a hunger strike and this time I would not quit the strike.”
After frantically trying to contact the prison for days, the mother, who struggles with fibromyalgia and complex PTSD and is rarely able to make the almost 300-mile round trip from Bournemouth to visit her son in Worcester, was informed that her son had been persuaded to end his affair. hunger strike.
When Independent He contacted the prison service for comment, they denied he was on strike for the second time. It is not known how long he refused to eat on this occasion.
His mother is calling for urgent action to help Mr Ali and nearly 3,000 other IPP prisoners trapped under a sentence she says has “destroyed” her son.
The controversial sentences, in which offenders were given a minimum but not a maximum prison sentence, were annulled in 2012 due to human rights concerns. But the repeal of the policy did not affect those already convicted, with thousands left to languish in prison for years beyond their actual prison sentence.
After a deeply traumatic childhood, full details of which we have chosen not to disclose to respect the family’s privacy, Mr Ali became involved in crime and was first imprisoned at the age of 15, using the stick in a bag to commit a series of youth betting shop robberies. imitation firearm.
He then went on the run for nearly two years, during which time he became a father, but eventually turned himself in to authorities in 1999, at the age of 26, and was convicted of other offences, including driving offences, robbery and burglary, and received an automatic sentence. Two strikes of life imprisonment with a minimum term of five years and seven months. He has been imprisoned ever since.
He was being held at HMP Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight and was sentenced to a three-year duty-free IPP in 2008 for seriously injuring another prisoner during a fight.
The mother, who believed that her son’s offending was linked to PTSD resulting from traumatic events in his childhood, said that when she was first given the IPP sentence, she was determined to serve her sentence and return to her son.
But his hopes soon began to fade as he faced multiple parole hearings with no legal representation as his mental health deteriorated.
Mrs. Ali told Independent: “It destroyed us. It was a slow death.
“I watched him turn from a living child into a shadow of himself and there’s nothing I can do. The weakness made me sick. My family is heartbroken.
“It was so horrible. “His whole dream was to be home in time for his son to be his father, but he never got to see that child and now he’s 20.”
At a hearing in September 2022, the Parole Board noted that Mr Ali had developed stuttering and nervous tics in prison, linked to his deterioration in mental health, but did not recommend his release or transfer to liberated conditions.
Among the risk factors they listed in rejecting his release was “loss of hope and the feeling that there is nothing to lose.”
His next parole hearing is scheduled for this fall, but Mr. Ali once again has no legal representation.
As he recovered from a hunger strike last year and slowly resumed his liquid diet, Ms. Ali tried to remind him of his hopes for the future: publishing his poetry and fulfilling his dream of owning a Siberian husky.
He opposed the injustice of IPP sentencing, while calling for a review of all indeterminate sentences and wholesale reform of the prison system with a focus on rehabilitation.
He added: “The system let him down. I’m devastated. I’m devastated for him.
“It’s just unfair. Why is my son being treated so badly? Why did they treat him like a monster while allowing monsters to emerge?”
Commenting on the IPP sentence, he added: “He will need support for the rest of his life. He has terrible anxiety and hears voices.
“IPP is now outlawed. This is against the law. That’s why everyone who participates in the IPP needs to be reviewed.”
Independent The IPP called for an urgent review of all prisoners serving prison sentences. Of the 2,796 IPP inmates incarcerated, 1,180 were never released and 708 served more than 10 years beyond their minimum sentences.
Approximately 90 IPP inmates died by suicide; Among them is Scott Rider, who was sentenced to 23 months in prison and took his own life in despair after serving 17 years.
Lord David Blunkett, the architect of the tainted sentence, is among those leading calls for reform after admitting he regretted introducing it as New Labour’s home secretary in 2005.
He called on the incoming government to accelerate a series of reforms recently passed in the Victims and Prisoners Bill to help prisoners like Yousef; But the changes fall short of the outrageous implementation demanded by campaigners and the justice committee.
A spokesman for HM Prison and Probation Service said: “There is no evidence to support the allegation that he was mistreated by staff and this prisoner is not on hunger strike.”