Robert Stewart: Serving a life sentence for the killing

Robert Stewart, now 24, wrote to a fellow killer four months before he battered Zahid Mubarek in Feltham Young Offenders' Institution, west London.

Stewart was present when Maurice Travis murdered an inmate in 1998 but was not charged. Travis got a life sentence.

His letter was read out at the inquiry into Mr Mubarek's murder in March 2000.

Dexter Dias, for the Mubarek family, read the letter that Stewart had sent to Travis after the June 1998 killing of Alan Averall at Stoke Heath jail.

Stewart, then held in Hindley prison, near Wigan, asked Travis if he had been given his "recommendation" yet - the minimum jail term set down by the trial judge - or where he was going to have to serve the life sentence.

"What's done is done. At least C [another prisoner] will be joinin' you," wrote Stewart.

"Everyone thinks am next. Let's wait and see. If I get out in four weeks, it could be the first murder of the millennium! Ha ha."

Shortly into 2000, following the sending of this letter, Stewart was transferred to Feltham in connection with a separate trial. He was later moved into the same cell as Zahid Mubarek.

On 21 March 2000, Stewart battered Zahid with a table leg in the middle of the night.

Zahid, a first-time petty crime offender, had been expecting to be released the following morning. Police seized this letter to Travis, along with others, after the killing.

Job with knives

In another letter to Travis, Stewart gloated that despite his link to the previous killing, he had been made a kitchen orderly with access to knives.

Knife: Steart made it in Feltham cell

By this point, Stewart had been involved in a separate grievous bodily harm attack when he stabbed another inmate below the eye.

Stewart wrote: "After all dat bisness wid West Mercia police [Travis' Stoke Heath murder], dat Sec 18 I done on C wing [Stewart's GBH attack] and the plastic knife stabbing last year, I got the orderly job in the cooking class," wrote Stewart. "Av got it again too! Handling knives all day. Ha! Ha!"

Giving evidence, Joyce O'Mara, a probation officer from Hindley, said that had she been aware of these letters, she would have filed a security report.

"The tragedy is that he did commit a murder in March of 2000. Whether it is the first murder of the millennium, I do not know," she said.

"What concerns me is about the information flowing to the risk assessment because clearly, if you are going to make a good assessment, you need the best possible information."

"Here we have Stewart being involved, implicated, in one incident involving a knife murder," said Dexter Dias for the family.

"He then has stabbed someone in the eye area with a sharp instrument and, in Hindley, on this sentence, he is an orderly handling knives all day. Does that not seem madness to you?"

"It most certainly does, yes," replied Ms O'Mara.

The inquiry continues.