When Abdul Hai saw what Tommy Robinson had posted on X, he felt panic rising in his chest. A friend had messaged asking if he’d seen the post, and sent over a screenshot. Hai opened the message.
There was his name, and there – for Robinson’s 1 million followers to see – was the false claim that Hai had been convicted of the murder of Richard Everitt, a 15-year-old killed in north London 30 years ago.
“I was never involved with the murder. I was never at the scene. I had no involvement whatsoever,” says Hai. “And this wasn’t just ‘well, you must have been there’ or something. This guy just said I was convicted of this most heinous crime. I was horrified … And then you see all the comments.”
Hai – who was acquitted of the murder after a judge threw out the case against him due to lack of evidence – is now considering legal action against X after he says it failed to remove Robinson’s comment for more than three weeks. An X spokesperson said it had “swiftly” removed posts from Robinson “to comply with UK law”.
During 16 years as a Labour councillor in Camden, he was always open about the case. But he has now decided to tell the full story of his 30-year-battle to clear his name, saying that increasingly hate-filled online abuse has left him with few other choices.
“Despite the hatred and barriers, I always felt that I did the right thing, pulled myself together and jumped over hurdle after hurdle,” he says, quietly. “Now I just feel like I need to live. I need to own my own narrative of this. This was a miscarriage of justice. I’m the victim. I’m not the perpetrator.”
Hai’s life changed when, during a period of racial tensions, Richard was confronted and stabbed by a group of Asian youths in Somers Town, north London, on 13 August 1994. The court heard it was revenge for a jewellery mugging unrelated to Richard; a judge said it was “an unprovoked racial attack”.
Hai, now a senior executive at a property and retail company, is at pains to stress his sympathy and respect for the Everitt family, who unveiled a new memorial to the teenager this summer. “My innocence does not take away the fact that Richard’s family lost their son, their brother, their loved one, and my thoughts are always going to be with them,” he says. But the night of the murder also changed his life for ever. “It’s a night that I find very difficult to think about,” he says. “It does bring a lot of emotion.”
Then 19, he had been playing football about half a mile away from the scene of the murder. But when he was stopped by police and asked to go to a station voluntarily he did not think to refuse. “I went and cooperated, because I had nothing to hide,” he says. “That evening, they told me that they were arresting me on suspicion of murder.”
Five months later he was charged with murder and sent to Feltham young offender institution for six weeks where he was targeted by other inmates. His lawyers kept assuring him there was no case against him, but his fear grew. “One night I was in my cell and I could hear people saying ‘let’s burn him with petrol 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 argument, Mrs Justice Steel told the jury to acquit Hai, ruling there was no evidence that he was among the group that had killed Richard. Two men were convicted: Badrul Miah was given a life sentence for conspiring to murder the teenager and Showat Akbar was found guilty of violent disorder.
Fulfilling a promise to his grandmother, Hai performed Umrah, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, then his parents sent him to Bangladesh for several months. Almost as soon as he returned to London, he was punched in the face and knocked unconscious in an unprovoked attack.
But he started to rebuild his life. He became a youth worker, got married and had children. In 2006, despite his fears, he put himself forward to become a councillor in Camden and for 16 years focused on youth safety, building bridges between faith groups and tackling race inequalities. A trustee of multiple charities, he was awarded an OBE for services to young people in 2022. He hoped that would silence the abusers. It didn’t.
Over the years, he has won a legal challenge to get a book that repeated claims against him pulped, has had to negotiate with Wikipedia to make clear his innocence, and deleted and blocked countless abusers. When he put himself up for selection to become a Labour candidate last year, his timeline was flooded with abuse, with many people claiming he had been convicted of murder.
After three decades, he now hopes telling his story will shed a light on the damage online abuse and disinformation can inflict.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that this would continue for the rest of my life. That I just have to continue confronting this and justifying my innocence is something I find quite difficult to comprehend,” he says. “Even though I was acquitted, I feel like I’ve been given a life sentence.”
