Asylum seekers are being housed by the Home Office in a former courthouse turned hostel which promised nights in “an authentic prison cell” to backpackers.

Hundreds of people are understood to be place in facility – which appears to have been a form of court and prison cell ‘theme park’ accommodation – including some who were imprisoned in the past in home countries, like Libya.

They have said that the experience of being locked up in the UK in prison cell-type conditions had traumatised them again.

The Guardian is not identifying the facility after a spate of attacks by the far right on accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees.

The hostel was previously a courthouse with a prison cell wing and has preserved many of the penal facilities including cell windows, and heavy old-fashioned cell doors complete with keys and prison-style bunk beds.

The hostel, whose website includes the phrases “sleep in an authentic prison cell”, has a mix of dormitories and smaller rooms including the former cells.

The Home Office has said asylum seekers are staying in “regular hotel accommodation” and the part of the building with “experience rooms” is not accessible.

Internal Home Office email discussions about how to respond to the Guardian’s questions were inadvertently sent to another media outlet who passed the correspondence onto the Guardian.

In the emails, one official says of the response drafted for the Guardian: “I’ve called them experience rooms to avoid saying prison. Can we say that no one has stayed in court rooms or were they inappropriately placed there?”

It also emerged in the internal email chain that when Home Office officials visited the hostel on 25 October they discovered overcrowding and a courtroom “fully set”.

It adds that some rooms had to be changed and beds removed to comply with local planning rules. The emails state that no new asylum seekers would be moved in during the changes.

Psychology experts have found that asylum seekers housed in military barrack accommodation, such as Napier in Folkestone, by the Home Office, have been re-traumatised by the military surroundings – having fled military regimes or police or army violence.

While use of the old prison wing was intended to provide lighthearted interest and history for the backpackers who stayed there before the Home Office took over the site, the wing has a very different resonance for traumatised asylum seekers.

One asylum seeker staying there said: “Everything is so bad here. Some of us have been through Libya where we have been imprisoned or have been tortured in other places. It makes us feel very bad to be living in a prison building even though we are not locked in.”

He said that the prison-style accommodation was not the only bad thing. “We are all sleeping close together and we are worried that we will catch Covid,” he said.

He and others had complained to staff about the conditions but nothing had been done, he said.

“I have sleeping problems and I don’t feel safe here,” he said. “We were in another place before they put us here which was better than this. They just move us around like animals. They don’t care about us at all.”

Steve Crawshaw, policy and advocacy director of Freedom from Torture, said: “This week we heard the home secretary ludicrously claiming that asylum seekers are attracted to Britain by the prospect of staying in our hotels.

“Now, it seems that they are treating detention itself as a joke. The lack of basic humanity in the government’s approach sometimes just beggars belief.”

Maddie Harris, founder of Humans for Rights Network, said: “It is unthinkable that the Home Office is using this place to accommodate people seeking safety, many of whom will have been detained in countries such as Syria and Libya.

“This is extremely traumatising for them. This accommodation must immediately be closed and residents provided with safe, secure accommodation that does not resemble a prison.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Due to unprecedented demand we have had to use temporary accommodation such as hotels to meet our statutory duties.”

“The health and wellbeing of those in our care is our priority which is why all accommodation must meet relevant health and safety legislation with a strict adherence to Public Health England guidelines.