An inquest into the death of 24-year-old, Black man Mohamud Hassan of Cardiff will open on Thursday, March 4th, 2021, in Cardiff. The Hassan family will be legally represented by Michael Mansfield QC, supported by Hilary Brown of Virgo Legal Consultancy. Following the recent funeral of Mohamud that took place on February 25th, 2021, and a pathology report that does not identify a cause of death. This Inquest will offer the Hassan family the first opportunity to seek answers to critical questions regarding the death of Mohamud.
Concerning evidence disclosure, we will seek immediate access to the police body can and CCTV videos that have been withheld from the family by the Independent Office of Police Complaints.
We will also explore the rationale for the police attending Mohamud's home address on the evening of Friday, January 9th, 2021. There is intense speculation that they went to his property in response to public complaints of a ‘breach of the peace”
We still do not know that precise reason why they attended or indeed what then happened when they arrived at the property. It's a scandal that even the most basic details have not been released to the family. Is it any wonder that our communities have so little faith in a system that cannot even provide the most basic of details surrounding the circumstances of the death in custody? This is precisely why the system is in need of urgent and radical reform. It has an overwhelming propensity to hide the truth, to obscure detail, and in doing so conspires to deny justice and transparency to those families who grievously mourn their loved ones and are desperate for the detail of exactly what happened. Surely any family who suffers a death in custody should have a fundamental human right to find out immediately what happened and why, and immediate access to any bodycam and CCTV footage that shows their relatives last living moments.
Our information is that the house was quiet that night and that Mohamud was actually sleeping when police arrived at his property.
There was also baseless speculation by the Coroner's and the state pathologist, based on information presumably passed on by the police, that he had been drinking at this "party". This was brutally undermined by the pathology report that showed he had no alcohol at all in his system.
We will be working hard to secure the maximum transparency and visibility for this inquest process despite the constraints of the current lockdown and all reporting in more detail at the forthcoming public meeting, which will take place on March 9th, 2021.
Please join us as we increase the public pressure in the run-up to this Inquest.
