Four Nigerians, Adedeji, Savi, Okunola and Okoya have been convicted for sending series of messages posted on a group chat known “MDs World [crying emoji]” in a few hours on 8 November 2020.
Ademola Adedeji, 19, and three friends from Moston in north Manchester were each sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm, as they were found guilty for taking part in a private group chat on the Telegram messaging app a few days after the murder of one of their friends.
A youth justice organization known as Kids of Colour, said the case showed evidence of “thought policing”.
According to Kids of Colour, innocent young people had been criminalised for sending immature messages in the throes of grief, messages which were misinterpreted as proof of violent intent.
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The judge, Justice Goose, while sentencing them on Friday, said the case involved two rival gangs, the M40 from Moston and the RTD gang from Rochdale and Oldham.
“It was played out in social media and through drill rap music, with threats of violence, the display of weapons, including firearms, machetes and crossbows. Entering the territory of one gang was treated as provocation, to be met by violence or the threat of violence,” he said.
The defendants while pleading not guilty, denied being in a gang, saying M40 was a drill music collective in which some of them rapped. The jury was shown YouTube videos featuring some of the teenagers rapping and posturing in Moston with their faces covered.
While convicting them, the jury found them guilty of taking part in a conspiracy spanning three months, including at least two violent attacks said to be committed by other defendants.
The prosecution while arguing their case said their role in the conspiracy was identifying who should be attacked and obtaining information about their whereabouts.
According to Guardian.co.uk, the incriminating Telegram chat was set up by another defendant, Jeffrey Ojo, not long before Soyoye was fatally stabbed by members of the RTD gang. It was reported that four of the defendants named Harry Oni, Brooklyn Jitobah, Martin Junior Thomas and Simon Thorne were present when Soyoye was murdered. Thorne and Thomas were also jailed eight years.
The report further noted that they took part in a street fight with 13 youths from the RTD gang where machetes and metal pipes were used, before running away, leaving Soyoye to bleed to death alone. He was said to have been stabbed 15 times, including in the perineum.
According to the prosecution, it was the “guilt and shame” of knowing they had run away and left Soyoye to die that prompted them to seek violent revenge, while adding that the Telegram chat showed the 10 plotting to get their revenge, picking out targets.
Adedeji was said to have contributed about 11 out of the chat’s 345 messages, with one of them seeing him pass on the postcode of one of Soyoye’s killers. They were never attacked but were ultimately convicted of Soyoye’s murder.
Savi on his part wrote 11 out of the 345 messages, taking part in the chat for 14 minutes, with one of the post suggesting the “napping” (kidnapping) the cousin of one of Soyoye’s killers and taking his phone away so that he could not contact others.
Savi’s in his defence said that he was not making serious suggestions and had no idea that any actual violence might take place as a result. In the event, no one was ever kidnapped as part of the conspiracy.
Oni, Jitobah and two others – Jeffrey Ojo and Gideon Kalumda – were found guilty of conspiracy to murder. Oni, Ojo and Kalumda were sentenced to 21 years. Jitobah received a 20-year sentence.
The director of Kids of Colour, Roxy Legane said the case was the latest in a series of trials which had seen large groups of often black boys imprisoned for who they know.
“This is a case of guilty by association because, once again, the harms of a small minority have drawn in a much wider net for prosecution,” she said.
“For these 10 boys, it is their knowing each other, whether through school or church, that has been manipulated to draw them closer together, and draw broader conclusions about what their knowing each other amounts to.
“Their associations become evidence of guilt. Shared schools, social media friendships, music interests, messaging groups and, of course, sharing being black has been used to frame them as a criminal gang.”
According to her, the private messages used to bolster a gang narrative were in fact “thoughtless, immature, emotional messages” which “became criminal, became intent: it feels like thought policing”.
The case was tried under conspiracy legislation, which came into law long before the age of mobile phones and social media. It has similarities with crimes prosecuted as “joint enterprise”, a common law doctrine where an individual can be jointly convicted of the crime of another, if the court decides they foresaw that the other party was likely to commit that crime.
But the judge stressed: “The defendants were not in a joint enterprise; they were each principal parties playing a full role in committing the offence of a criminal conspiracy either to kill others or to intentionally cause them grievous bodily harm.”
Sourced from Guardian
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