MEND stands with the Birmingham 4

MEND has added its name to the joint statement calling on the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to reopen the case of the Birmingham 4 – Naweed Ali, Khobaib Hussain, Mohibur Rahman and Tahir Aziz.

The four men were convicted in 2017 and sentenced to life imprisonment after a counter-terrorism operation run by West Midlands Police. Their lawyers, including Gareth Peirce and Stephen Kamlish KC, have raised serious concerns about the safety of these convictions. It includes evidence improperly introduced, undercover officers whose identities were kept hidden and whose accounts did not hold together, and no clear forensic or video evidence linking the men to the items the prosecution relied on. On the day of the arrest, a bag containing weapons appeared under a car seat on one man’s first shift. The men have always said it was planted.

Gareth Peirce represented the Birmingham Six. She has described this case as a reprint of the past, and that should stop every one of us. The same force, the same city, the same reliance on evidence that cannot be trusted. Six innocent Irishmen spent sixteen years in prison before their convictions were quashed in 1991, and it was that scandal that created the CCRC in the first place. The lesson Britain claimed to have learned has not been learned. Where it was the Irish then, it is Muslims now.

This is what structural Islamophobia looks like when you follow it all the way through. Not only abuse on the street, but the apparatus of the state pointed at Muslim men. A trial held while four terror attacks unfolded across England, with a judge who refused to delay, and a jury asked to weigh the fate of four Muslims in that atmosphere.

It has been over two years since the application to the CCRC. In May this year, Khobaib Hussain’s lawyers submitted a further application. Still nothing has moved. For nearly a decade these men and their families have lived the reality that justice delayed is justice denied.

We join the call for:

• The urgent review and reopening of this case by the CCRC under the exceptional circumstances provision, which allows a fresh appeal even where there is no new evidence
• A full and independent investigation into the conduct of West Midlands Police
• The convictions to be quashed and the men released

Standing for justice is a duty owed to the innocent, whoever they are and whoever stands against them. MEND calls on all people of conscience to support this cause.