Pc cleared of racial abuse
Updated on 03 November 2009
A Metropolitan Police officer is cleared of racially abusing three teenagers, four fellow officers from his Tactical Support Group are also cleared.
The Muslim youths in West London call police vans "bully vans".
They carried officers from the Metropolitan Police's frontline elite, the Territorial Support Group (TSG).
One day in June 2007 it was alleged three teenagers were beaten and abused inside this van which was witnessed by whistleblower PC Amechi Onwugbonu.
But the black constable's evidence against five white officers was dismissed by their lawyers as a pack of lies and a jury cleared them all of a range of charges amounting to racist violence and a cover-up.
One defendant said PC Onwugbonu had been motivated by jealousy and a different attitude to policing.
According to the three youths, officers set upon them during a "stop and search" just off the Edgware Road
One described how inside the van officer PC Mark Jones told him "you're f***ing robbing people here while British soldiers are dying in Iraq".
Another, a convicted robber, claimed he was pulled into the van and stamped on and a third teenager said he was repeatedly slapped across the face.
This was yet one more occasion to add to the 150 times the three had been stopped and searched in the last two-and-a-half years.
The significance of this case could not be understated in the wake of G20. The prosecution heavily relied upon the credibility of the whistleblower, he himself a member of the TSG.
The jury however did not accept his account. But for the officers it is not over yet as the threat of disciplinary charges and civil action still hang over these men.
Sgt William Wilson has been suspended for the past two and a half years, as has PC Mark Jones.
What the trial was not told was that the former Royal Marine was central to another case of alleged police brutality inside a TSG van.
This time on a terror suspect Babar Ahmed, arrested in a raid in 2003. During that dawn raid at his home in Tooting, south London, the 34-year-old was subjected to violent assaults and religious abuse - he was said to have been held in a neck brace and repeatedly punched, abused and mocked for his religious beliefs
It was a case the commissioner paid out £60,000 in compensation and damages, following a civil action brought against the force by his family.
Fiona Murphy, Babar Ahmad's lawyer said, "We have placed a file before the director of prosecutions, Keir Starmer, and we have asked him to institute a criminal prosecution of PC Jones in respect of the events surrounding Babar Ahmed.
To this date, some six months later the DPP has not reached a decision with regard to that paperwork. And we are in the process of preparing further court proceedings to compel the DPP to reach a decision."
Neither the Police Federation nor the Metropolitan police would comment tonight.
