'I have to own my narrative': Man acquitted of racist murder in 1995 after years of mistreatment | Online abuse

When Abdul Hai saw what Tommy Robinson had posted on X, he felt panic rising within him. A friend emailed to ask if he had seen the post and sent a screenshot. Hai opened the message.

There was his name, and there was – visible to Robinson's one million followers – the false claim that Hai had been convicted of the murder of Richard Everitt, a 15-year-old killed 30 years ago in north London.

“I was never involved in the murder. I was never there. I wasn’t involved at all,” says Hai. “And it wasn't just, 'Well, you must have been there' or anything like that. This guy just said I was convicted of this heinous crime. I was horrified… And then you see all the comments.”

Hai – who was acquitted of murder after a judge dropped the case against him for lack of evidence – is now considering legal action against him. An X spokesman said they had removed Robinson's posts “quickly” “to comply with UK law.” “.

During his 16 years as a Labor councilor in Camden he was always outspoken about the case. But now he has decided to tell the full story of his 30-year battle to clear his name, saying the increasingly hateful online abuse has left him with little choice.

“Despite the hate and the barriers, I always felt like I did the right thing, pulled myself together and overcome one hurdle after another,” he says quietly. “Now I just feel like I have to live. I have to own my own narrative of it. That was a miscarriage of justice. I am the victim. I am not the perpetrator.”

Hai's life changed when Richard was confronted and stabbed by a group of Asian youths on August 13, 1994, during a time of racial tension in Somers Town, north London. A judge said it was “an unprovoked racist attack.”

Hai, now an executive at a real estate and retail company, is at pains to express his sympathy and respect for the Everitt family, which unveiled a new memorial for the teenager this summer. “My innocence does not change the fact that Richard's family lost their son, their brother, their loved one, and my thoughts will always be with them,” he said. But the night of the murder also changed his life forever. “It’s an evening I can hardly think about,” he says. “It brings a lot of emotions.”

The then 19-year-old had been playing soccer about half a mile from the crime scene. But when he was stopped by the police and asked to go to the station voluntarily, he didn't think about refusing. “I went and cooperated because I had nothing to hide,” he says. “That evening they informed me that they were arresting me on suspicion of murder.”

Five months later he was charged with murder and sent to Feltham Youth Detention Center for six weeks, where he was attacked by other inmates. His lawyers repeatedly assured him that there was no case against him, but his fear grew. “One night I was in my cell and I heard people saying, 'Let's burn him with gasoline in the morning.' It was really scary,” he says.

In October 1995, he appeared in court along with two others, but at the end of the prosecution's case, Judge Steel asked the jury to acquit Hai because there was no evidence that he was part of the group that killed Richard. Two men were convicted: Badrul Miah received a life sentence for conspiring to murder the teenager and Showat Akbar was found guilty of violent disorder.

Hai fulfilled a promise to his grandmother and performed Umrah, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. His parents then sent him to Bangladesh for several months. No sooner had he returned to London than he was punched in the face and knocked unconscious in an unprovoked attack.

But he began to rebuild his life. He became a youth worker, married and had children. In 2006, despite his fears, he ran for Camden city councilor and spent 16 years focused on youth safety, building bridges between faith communities and combating racial inequality. A trustee of several charities, he was awarded an OBE for services to young people in 2022. He hoped this would silence the perpetrators. That wasn't the case.

Over the years, he has won a court challenge to have a book that made repeated allegations against him quashed, had to negotiate with Wikipedia to clarify his innocence, and deleted and blocked countless perpetrators. When he stood for election as the Labor Party candidate last year, his schedule was flooded with abuse, with many people claiming he had been convicted of murder.

Now, after three decades, he hopes that telling his story will shine a light on the damage that online abuse and disinformation can cause.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would last the rest of my life. The fact that I just have to continue to deal with it and justify my innocence is pretty hard for me to understand,” he says. “Although I was acquitted, I feel like I was sentenced to life in prison.”