The British army has admitted that a Muslim soldier was a victim of “anti-Islamic bias”, after settling a landmark religious discrimination case brought after fellow soldiers refused to let the claimant properly observe Ramadan while deployed in Cyprus.
Ebrima Bayo, 39, from Huddersfield, said he was denied hot food given to fellow soldiers when he broke his fast, and forced to sign a waiver committing him to spend extra time in the gym, claiming it was necessary to ensure he was fit.
“My understanding was they were trying to break my willpower. You said you were going to fast but we are going to make life difficult for you and eventually you will crack, buckle and stop,” Bayo said.
The former private described being taunted and harassed by colleagues when he went out for Friday prayers during the holy month. “When we would put on our mosque attire, we would get people calling us names, trying to be funny, saying what have you got underneath that, why are your pockets full?” he said.
The discrimination took place in 2017 while Bayo was on deployment in Cyprus with the Royal Logistic Corps, and eventually led him to leave the army, despite it being a job to which he had aspired since he was young.
The MoD resisted Bayo’s complaint and it took the former soldier five and a half years to win an apology and compensation. That came only in March after a ruling that Bayo could have his case heard in a public employment tribunal.
The army said it “apologises for the anti-Islamic bias, both conscious and unconscious within the unit” and for a “culturally insensitive attitude on the part of the chain of command”. It said Bayo was an “excellent” soldier and he had received an undisclosed sum in compensation.
On the first day of Ramadan in late May 2017, Bayo said, the only food that was left for him and a Muslim colleague in the canteen was “a bacon and a sausage sandwich” although “the chefs know we are Muslim and do not eat bacon”. A chef eventually came down and put salad and tinned tuna on a paper plate for them.
Although the canteen closed at 6pm for junior ranks, soldiers who went out on patrol and arrived late were saved a hot meal. Bayo and his colleague were given only cold food, and on one occasion the discrimination was particularly evident.
“I went out on patrol with all guys. We came back a bit later after meal time. Everybody that came back was accounted for, they were all provided with a hot meal. Except me,” Bayo said. “Everyone else had a hot plate … for them. And mine was left in the fridge.”
Bayo recalled being singled out for an identity check on returning from Friday prayers outside the base at the Ledra Palace hotel in Nicosia “while other soldiers were waved through”. He said Christian troops were provided with a vehicle to attend church on Sundays.
The veteran said he believed that “yes, the British army is institutionally racist”, partly because of what happened and the way his complaint was originally handled and subsequently contested over an extended period by the MoD.
Emma Norton, his solicitor from the Centre for Military Justice, who acted with support from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said she believed Bayo would not have brought a discrimination claim had the army engaged constructively when he first complained in autumn 2017.
“Instead they completely rejected his complaint, causing him to have to appeal it, and then they tried for years through their lawyers to have the case thrown out of court,” she said. “That is not the sign of an organisation that genuinely wants to learn from its mistakes.”
Bayo, originally from the Gambia, a Commonwealth nation from which the British army has traditionally recruited, joined up in 2004 and served full-time for six years, and afterwards as a reservist. He rejoined to serve full-time in Cyprus with the hope of restarting an army career he had dreamed of his whole life.
“My grandfather fought in the second world war, in Burma, and I grew up seeing his medals. My uncle was in the Gambian army. Every year, a British regiment, the Royal Gibraltars, would come to Gambia and we would see them. They used to give us sweets and books and things like that,” he said.
Now a taxi driver, Bayo lives in Yorkshire with his wife and three children. He cried when he talked about his eight-year-old son. “That’s what’s most disheartening for me. He says: ‘Oh Daddy, I want to be a soldier like you,’ but now I discourage him, even from playing soldier and all that. I don’t want him to go through what I went through.”
