Winston Green 8 - Murder Trial Update Monday 16th July 2012

Shazad Ali, 30, Abdul Musavir, 31, and Haroon Jahan, 20, died on the 10th August 2011, after being hit by a car in the midst of severe rioting in Winston Green, Birmingham. Their deaths were deemed to have been unlawful.

Adam King, Joshua Donald, Ian Beckford, Ryan Goodwin, Shaun Flynn, Everton Graham, Juan Pablo Ruiz-Gaviria, and Aaron Parkins; were arrested and all were charged with three counts each of murder in that they all conspired/planned the murder of the three deceased. Their trial began on Wednesday 18th April and was scheduled to last 10 weeks but is now into its' 14th week, mainly due to the shenanigans of the Crown Prosecution. Closing statements from the defence finished last Friday and the case is now in the hands of the judge and jury.

This morning Mr. Justice Flaux began his summing up by giving directions to the jury on the law in relation to the trial.

First of all he said, that they must consider their verdict on Ian Beckford and only Ian Beckford (the driver of the car that hit the deceased, this is an agreed fact) before giving consideration to any of the other defendants. They have three options before them in relation to Mr. Beckford, 1) Murder with intent that he unlawfully took the lives of the deceased, or 2) that he intended the deceased serious injury but did not intend to kill them or 3) Manslaughter, that he had no intention to kill, that what happened was an accident.

If they the jury decide that it was not 1) Murder with intent, and Justice Flaux emphasised, that if they did find this they should not under any circumstance go on to examine any evidence against the seven co-defendants but acquit them immediately.

If they decide that Mr. Beckford did commit murder with intent, only then could they consider verdicts on the other seven and that they must consider each of these defendants separate from each other and the index offender and only consider the evidence against each of them

Mr Flaux then gave a brief summing up of the case, main points of evidence from the Crown Prosecution and the defence barristers.

He was quite clear that the opening statement by the Crown Prosecution that the defendants were out that night to rob and loot was totally with out foundation. That if this as the Crown Prosecution maintain was a plot, a conspiracy to murder and that all eight were in it together, then they would have had to have concocted all this in the space of three minutes.

Further that evidence from witnesses from the community would have to be treated with extreme caution due to the offer of police immunity from any criminality that any of the witnesses might have been involved in. The fact that this offer had been made was withheld from the court and only came to light ten weeks into the trial (after all the witnesses had given evidence), through the evidence of the second senior police officer in command of investigating the killings. That the withholding of this fact, had denied the defendants a fuller cross-examination of the witnesses. [ Defence barristers had challenged this as an abuse of due process and that the trial should be stopped, but Mr Justice Flaux ruled that with proper cautioning to the jury the trial would proceed].

Now he will take the jury through the evidence bit by bit as he sees it, but has made clear to the jury that it is up to them and only them to decide the facts of the case. That they may where there is no direct clear evidence make inferences from indirect evidence.

His summing up is expected to last till late Wednesday afternoon and then Mr. Flaux will ask the jury to retire and consider their verdict/s.

The catalyst for the Winston Green Riot was the murder of Mark Duggan by police on the 4th August 2011. Well over a thousand civilians now languish in jail as a result of disturbances that followed the murder but amongst the thousands that have been arrested, not a single member of the police force. In fact 31 members of the police force who had some connection with the murder have refused to be interviewed and are not facing prosecution for refusing to do so. During 2011/2012, 121 people died after contact with the police, including two murders, 15 deaths in or following police custody, 18 police road traffic fatalities, 39 apparent suicides following release from police custody, 47 other deaths following police contact. Has there been any arrests of the police, not one?