Blog

The family of an asylum seeker who died on the Bibby Stockholm barge say they do not understand why a man “whose mental state was clearly not right” was moved there.

An inquest into the death of Leonard Farruku, an Albanian asylum seeker whose body was found in a shower room on the barge in Portland Port on 12 December 2023 opened in Bournemouth on Monday.

Farruku’s older sister, Marsida Keci, said in a statement read out to the court that she and her sister Jola, who both live in Italy, had many unanswered questions about the circumstances around their brother’s death.

Farruku was accommodated in a hotel in Paignton, Devon, by the Home Office, before being transferred to the Bibby Stockholm on 3 November just over a month before he died.

The inquest heard that according to a pathology report, it is probable Farruku had been dead for some time before his body was discovered. The cause of death was compression to the neck and suspension by ligature.

“We have so many questions that we need to know the answer to. We would like to know what help there was for people who are mentally unwell and why Nardi [the family’s nickname for Farruku] was moved to the barge when it seems his mental state was clearly not right. We need to understand how all Nardi’s dreams and ambitions ended up with his death there.”

Farruku was described by his sisters as “a good man, kind, talented, ambitious”. From an early age he showed considerable musical talent playing piano, accordion and organ and secured a scholarship to attend a music school in the Albanian capital Tirana.

They said that the death of first his mother when he was 17 and then his father when he was 22, affected him deeply. “He suffered a lot and became withdrawn”. His sisters urged him to seek help but said he did not engage with the psychologist he saw.

Farruku arrived in the UK on 7 August 2022 and initially stayed with relatives. At first he maintained contact with family but then he stopped communicating and did not respond to calls or emails. His sisters said that their last contact with him was August 2023.

“He told me he was having issues with the staff in the hotel. I had no idea he was later moved to the Bibby Stockholm barge,” said Keci in her statement.

“We have only found out what happened to Nardi during that time since we started the inquest process. We were completely speechless when we heard this information. Nardi had never behaved like this in his whole life.”

Farruku had received permission from the Home Office to work but he never got to know about this as the information was not communicated to him on the barge.

“When we found out he had died we couldn’t believe it. Everything was a blur and it felt like a nightmare,” said Keci.

The Bibby Stockholm barge was scrapped by the current government after it came to power last July and the final asylum seekers left the vessel at the end of last year before it was towed away from Portland in January.

While it was in operation it was evacuated owing to the presence of legionella bacteria in water pipes and claims of bed bugs and rotten food were made by asylum seekers and some members of staff. It is understood that the government is once again considering barges as asylum accommodation, along with disused holiday camps, former student accommodation and military bases.

The inquest continues.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a sign of how unusual this week’s Federal Reserve meeting is, the decision it will make on interest rates — usually the main event — is just one of the key unknowns to be resolved when officials gather Tuesday and Wednesday.

For now, it’s not even clear who will be there. The meeting will likely include Lisa Cook, an embattled governor, unless an appeals court or the Supreme Court rules in favor of an effort by President Donald Trump to remove her from office. And it will probably include Stephen Miran, a top White House economic aide whom Trump has nominated to fill an empty seat on the Fed’s board. But those questions may not be resolved until late Monday.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is mired in uncertainty. Hiring has slowed sharply, while inflation remains stubbornly high.

So a key question for the Fed is: Do they worry more about people who are out of work and struggling to find jobs, or do they focus more on the struggles many Americans face in keeping up with rising costs for groceries and other items? The Fed’s mandate from Congress requires it to seek both stable prices and full employment.

For now, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other Fed policymakers have signaled the Fed is more concerned about weaker hiring, a key reason investors expect the central bank will reduce its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point on Wednesday to about 4.1%.

Still, stubbornly high inflation may force them to proceed slowly and limit how many reductions they make. The central bank will also release its quarterly economic projections Wednesday, and economists project they will show that policymakers expect one or two additional cuts this year, plus several more next year.

WATCH: How Trump’s attempts to control Federal Reserve board threaten its long-held independence

Ellen Meade, an economics professor at Duke University and former senior economist at the Fed, said it’s a stark contrast to the early pandemic, when it was clear the Fed had to rapidly reduce rates to boost the economy. And when inflation surged in 2021 and 2022, it was also a straightforward call for the Fed, which moved quickly to raise borrowing costs to combat higher prices.

But now, “it’s a tough time,” Meade said. “It would be a tough time, even if the politics and the whole thing weren’t going on the way they are, it would be a tough time. Some people would want to cut, some people would not want to cut.”

Amid all the economic uncertainty, Trump is applying unprecedented political pressure on the Fed, demanding sharply lower rates, seeking to fire Cook, and insulting Powell, whom he has called a “numbskull,” “fool,” and “moron.”

Loretta Mester, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said that Fed officials won’t let the criticisms sway their decisions on policy. Still, the attacks are unfortunate, she said, because they threaten to undermine the Fed’s credibility with the public.

“Added to their list of the difficulty of making policy because of how the economy is performing, they also have to contend with the fact that there may be some of the public that’s skeptical about how they’ve gone about making their decisions,” she said.

David Andolfatto, an economics professor at the University of Miami and former top economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said that presidents have pressured Fed chairs before, but never as personally or publicly.

“What’s unusual about this is the level of open disrespect and just childishness,” Andolfatto said. “I mean, this is just beyond the pale.”

There are typically 12 officials who vote on the Fed’s policies at each meeting — the seven members of the Fed’s board of governors, as well as five of the 12 regional bank presidents, who vote on a rotating basis.

If a court rules that Cook can be fired, or Miran isn’t approved in time, then just 11 officials will vote on Wednesday. Either way, there ought to be enough votes to approve a quarter-point cut, but there could be an unusual amount of division.

Miran, if he is on the board, and Governor Michelle Bowman may dissent in opposition to a quarter-point reduction in favor of a steeper half-point cut.

There could be additional dissenting votes in the other direction, potentially from regional bank presidents who might oppose any cuts at all. Beth Hammack, president of the Fed’s Cleveland branch, and Jeffrey Schmid, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, have both expressed concern that inflation has topped the Fed’s 2% target for more than four years and is still elevated. If either votes against a cut, it would be the first time there were dissents in both directions from a Fed decision since 2019.

“This degree of division is unusual, but the circumstances are unusual, too,” Andolfatto said. “This is a situation central banks really don’t like: The combination of inflationary pressure and labor market weakness.”

Hiring has slowed in recent months, with employers shedding 13,000 jobs in June and adding just 22,000 in August, the government reported earlier this month. And last week a preliminary report from the Labor Department showed that companies added far fewer jobs in the year ending in March than previously estimated.

At the same time, inflation picked up a bit last month and remains above the Fed’s 2% target. According to the consumer price index, core prices — excluding food and energy — rose 3.1% in August compared with a year earlier..

With inflation still elevated, the Fed may have to proceed slowly with any further cuts, which would likely further frustrate the Trump White House.

“When you get to turning points, people can reasonably disagree about when to go,” Meade said.