The minicab driver in whose flat the Grenfell Tower fire started has said his heart is “full of pain, grief and desolation” and he can “never forget that it was in my flat, in my kitchen that the fire started … and all those lives were lost”.
Behailu Kebede, who lived in Grenfell Tower for 25 years, told a highly charged hearing in central London – attended by 24 executives from companies accused of responsibility for the fire – that he remained “broken inside”.
He made the comments, through an actor, at Grenfell Testimony Week, a four-day event aimed at achieving a measure of restorative justice, arranged as part of last year’s £150m out-of-court settlement of a civil case.
Other members of the community demanded long jail sentences for those they held responsible for the 72 deaths, as executives from companies involved looked on.
Kebede said he did not attend in person because he still felt “a deep pain and a shame that I will carry to my grave”. He said he almost had to go into witness protection, even though the fire began through no fault of his own but because of a fridge malfunction.
Dozens of the bereaved, survivors and residents gathered at Church House in Westminster to hear some of their number address representatives of companies including Celotex and Kingspan which made the combustible insulation, the fire engineer Exova, the builder Rydon and the council block’s owner, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
The US company Arconic, which made the highly flammable cladding, declined to send anyone. A table was left empty with the company’s name on it.
Sandra Ruiz, the aunt of 12-year-old Jessica Urbano Ramirez, who died in the fire after getting separated from her family, told the event Arconic’s absence “shows a total disregard for their responsibilities but also a total disregard for our loss”.
She was one of several speakers to call for jail sentences for executives of the various companies involved, saying some should be “behind bars”.
“They made decisions based on profit, based on speed, based on ‘couldn’t care less’,” she said.
The representatives included Mike Chaldecott, the chief executive of the UK and Ireland arm of Saint-Gobain, which manufactured the tower’s combustible Celotex insulation; Andrew Goldman, the marketing director of the main contractor, Rydon; and Elizabeth Campbell, the leader of Kensington and Chelsea council.
Representatives for Kingspan declined to give their names, but said: “It’s important for the bereaved to give their testimony and it’s important for us that we hear what they have to say.”
There were also representatives from the Home Office and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
The event, which runs for the rest of the week, did not attract universal support.
Farhad Neda, who lost his father in the fire, did not attend and said having representatives of the companies “doesn’t make much of a difference because they have heard everything we have had to say during the inquiry, they had our police statements, our witness statements and they just continue to take no notice of it. It just feels like they don’t care”.
But others hoped their statements would have an impact. Marcio Gomes, who lived on the 21st floor and whose son, Logan, was stillborn as a result of the fire, described Logan’s potential childhood with birthday cakes, first steps, the tooth fairy, bedtime stories and his preschool artwork pinned proudly on the fridge.
He then paused, before telling the corporate representatives: “This is what Logan’s life would have been like … this is what you have taken away.”
Willie Thompson, a resident who escaped the fire, recalled watching body bags being removed from the tower. He wanted people responsible to be “banged up” and serve 20-year prison sentences.
“They need to realise what they did to us,” he said, in a pre-recorded video. “I don’t think they have put enough thought into the damage that was done: 72 lives were lost but the families, the bereaved, so many lives have been destroyed by them.”
He called the corporate entities “the enemy” and concluded by saying he was brought up as a Catholic and was taught hate is a sin, “but I fucking hate them”.
The executives sat still, heads sometimes bowed during pauses for silence after the testimonies. At breaks they were led into a different area of the venue, Church House, the headquarters of the Church of England.
In the final testimony of the day, Georgina Smith, 19, who lived on the 12th floor, addressed the corporate representatives.
“Show me empathy, show me compassion and accountability for your neglectful actions,” she said. “Those actions must be punished.”
