Oxford law graduate cleared of role in London riot

An Oxford law graduate accused of throwing bricks at police during last summer's riots walked free from court on Friday after a jury took just half an hour to find him not guilty.

Fahim Alam, 26, was arrested on the second day of the riots, and accused of being part of a 50-strong crowd on Mare Street in Hackney, attacking police with bricks, bottles and fireworks. At one stage, a pitbull-type dog was released from the group and ran at police.

The arrest of the former law student, who also has a masters degree from the London School of Economics, received extensive media coverage at the time, with the story appearing on the front page of several national newspapers.

Alam had finished his first day at a new job in Bethnal Green and was walking to his grandmother's house in Hackney on 8 August, arriving on Mare Street around 6pm when the disorder was already underway.

PC Ben Sparks, from the Territorial Support Group, said he had seen Alam throw a rock and a brick at police who were trying to contain the crowd. The brick hit another officer in the leg, causing him to stumble. Sparks told the court he was "100% sure" that he could positively identify Alam as the man he had seen "draw his arm back and throw a large piece of rock towards me".

Sparks claimed to have spotted Alam in the crowd earlier and watched him constantly for 25 minutes, up until the point of his arrest. He said he had picked out Alam because of the distinctive clothing he was wearing, including a scarf that the officer described as "an Arabic shemagh, used by the military".

Sparks said: "He was the only male wearing a shemagh in the group and being ex-military, I suppose it stood out for me." He later explained that he had been in the TA.

Alam was represented in court by Imran Khan, the solicitor best known for acting for the family of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence. Khan challenged Sparks over how he could be sure that Alam was the man he had earlier seen throw the missiles. Khan said that anyone who has read the 'Where's Wally?' children's books will know how difficult it is to keep track of where one individual is in a crowd even on the pages of a book, let alone in a real-life and fast-moving situation such as the police faced on Mare Street.

Khan later accused the prosecution of having "an itchy trigger finger" in relation to riot cases and said his client should never have faced trial. If convicted of violent disorder, Alam could have faced up to two years in prison.

Khan said: "They should have paid greater attention to the weakness of the identification evidence and realised how difficult it was. I have never had a jury come back that quickly with their verdict before, which shows you how weak it was."

Speaking after his acquittal, Alam said being arrested and remanded in custody for six weeks – before being released subject to electronic curfew – had felt like being kidnapped. After initially being held in a police cell for 48 hours, he was then brought to court at 3am, during one of the special riot sittings. He said his experiences highlighted concerns over the way riot cases are treated by courts and he now plans to start a campaign for justice for defendants in this situation.

Alam said he was bemused by PC Sparks description of his neckwear as an "Arabic military scarf". He was, he says, making merely a fashion, rather than political, statement, by wearing it. "How can a shemagh have military connotations when they sell them in places like Topshop and Topman and all those corporate, chain-type shops?" he said.

Source: Fiona Bawdon, Guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25th March 2012