Robert Stewart: Tattooed RIP on his forehead

Robert Stewart was considered dangerous at a previous jail before he killed Zahid Mubarek in Feltham in March 2000.

The public inquiry into the murder heard that nurse Lindsey Martin feared he was violent, but she did not act on her gut feeling.

Ms Martin said Stewart had an obsessive relationship with another prisoner, who was the first of the pair to kill.

Robert Stewart, now 24, took a table leg and battered 19-year-old Zahid Mubarek hours before the Asian first-time offender was scheduled to be released. The killer has since been diagnosed as a racist psychopath.

I thought that if these [boys] are going to go through the system and you say they are capable of stabbing or hurting someone, you are just labelling them on a gut feeling and that would stay with them right through the system Lindsey Martin, nurse HMP Hindley

Giving evidence to the inquiry, Ms Martin said she had met Stewart in 1997 when he was held at HMP Hindley, near Wigan. Stewart's closest associate there was Maurice Travis.

On 23 June 1998, Travis stabbed to death another inmate, a killing Stewart was suspected to have played a role in planning.

Stewart was later moved to Feltham Young Offenders' Institution in west London, where he would later kill Zahid Mubarek.

Ms Martin told the inquiry that before that death she had overheard conversations between the two which made her fear they were capable of attacking other inmates, rather than just injuring themselves.

Bobby Cummines, a member of the inquiry panel, asked Ms Martin if she assumed they would "be so bad as to kill someone, that they were the baddest boys on the block?"

"I felt that is how dangerous they were but I could not [say so], I had nothing concrete to go off," said Ms Martin.

"So you had a gut feeling on that?" asked Mr Cummines.

"Yes it was a gut feeling and I stopped short of saying that," she replied.

"In case you were held up for ridicule?"

"Well that, ridicule, but more than anything I thought that if these [boys] are going to go through the system and you say they are capable of stabbing or hurting someone, you are just labelling them on a gut feeling and that would stay with them right through the system."

'Unhealthy relationship'

Ms Martin said Stewart and Travis were possibly obsessed with each other, although probably because they were fascinated with violence rather than having a sexual attraction.

Makeshift knife: Found, unused, in Feltham cell

In turn, this obsession manifested itself as a contest in their own minds as to who was the most dangerous, be it to themselves or others.

At times Stewart and Travis would have a shouting conversation, describing violent fantasies, even though they were separated by cell walls.

When Travis was put on the medical wing, Stewart began trying to harm himself as a means of joining him, said Ms Martin.

Among his attempts at self-harm, Stewart swallowed a screw, ate soap and tried to set fire to himself.

"Given that you had heard them, these boys, openly, it would seem, discussing at least self-harm, encouraging each other to hurt themselves, what, if anything, does that tell you of their possible mental health?" asked Neil Sheldon, counsel to the inquiry.

Ms Martin said they had complete disregard for the safety of others.

"They do what they want to do. They are also very immature, these lads, at this age.