Manchester MP to write to Raab over ‘racialised guilty by association’ verdicts

A Manchester MP is to raise concerns with the justice secretary over the conviction of several young black men who were jailed after taking part in a group chat discussing revenge for their friend’s murder.

Lucy Powell, the MP for Manchester Central, said black youths were being unfairly drawn into a “gang” narrative because of the music they listened to and who they knew.

She compared the case with another violent crime in Greater Manchester, in which a wealthy white teenager stabbed his friend to death in the most affluent suburb.

In 2019 Joshua Molnar was cleared of the murder and manslaughter of 17-year-old Yousef Makki in Hale Barns, Trafford, after a jury accepted that he had knifed him in the heart in self-defence.

Powell compared the case with a trial in which 10 men aged 18 to 21 from Moston were jailed on Friday for between eight and 21 years for conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm or murder. A jury found they had plotted to avenge the murder of their friend Alexander John Soyoye, who was stabbed to death on 5 November 2020 in a street fight involving some of the defendants.

Supporters these men were found “guilty by association”, some after taking part in a Telegram group chat shortly after Soyoye was murdered, weeks before any violence was carried out by some of the other defendants.

Those four 19-year-olds – Ademola Adedeji, Raymond Savi, Omolade Okoya and Azim Okunola – had no weapons, committed no violence and did not go on any “scoping missions” to harm those responsible for Soyoye’s death. But they took part in the group chat with boys who did, and were jailed for eight years for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm.

Powell said she was writing to the justice secretary, Dominic Raab, to raise concerns about the latest case, as well as to Andy Burnham, who as mayor of Greater Manchester is also the region’s police and crime commissioner.

Powell contrasted their convictions with the Makki case, “where two boys were at the scene when Makki was killed. They had very expensive barristers and a different demographic profile and went to private school, and the main offender [Molnar] was white and it was portrayed as a tragic accident. They were ‘just playing’ at being part of a gang … that may have been the case, but why can it not also be the case for young black men from north Manchester?”

Defence barristers in the Moston case complained that their clients had been unfairly labelled as “gangsters” because they had watched drill music videos on their phones.

Meanwhile Molnar filmed himself in the court building during his trial making stabbing motions to the soundtrack of a drill track with the lyric “two flicks with my hand, let’s see who bleeds”.

Sentencing the 10 men at Preston crown court, the judge Mr Justice Goose ruled that M40 was a criminal gang, of which the 10 defendants were either a “member or affiliate”.

The jury was played M40 music videos featuring some of the defendants. One, No Hook, has more than 180,000 views and shows large numbers of black youths with their faces covered, rapping and posturing outside a takeaway. The two main rappers in the video are Soyoye and Harry Oni, who was sentenced to 21 years for conspiracy to murder.

Other defendants had simply watched drill videos. Omolade had 3,019 videos on his phone, among them three M40 videos, including No Hook, watched once. His barrister, Adam Kane QC, sought to argue this did not mean he was a violent person.

“Eric Clapton didn’t really shoot the sheriff, any more than he shot the deputy,” said Kane. “Watching [drill videos], or listening to [drill], doesn’t mean you intend to emulate the things spoken of in real life, any more than watching Scarface or Goodfellas or Casino or the Godfather parts 1, 2 or 3 makes you a mafioso.”

Powell wrote a letter that was given to the judge before Friday’s sentencing. She said: “The frequent use of gang narratives in prosecutions relies heavily on racialised assumptions, loose associations and outdated or inaccurate stereotypes of inner-city neighbourhoods like Moston.”