on the 22nd of december last year
three women returning from a night out
were brutally attacked by
racists in northwest london
has investigated the police response to
what was recorded
as an extremely violent race hate
incident
one of the most serious categories of
crime when i was in that corner i was
covering my head like this
i was thinking my son's not going to
have a mum
and
i'm going to be dead
we can reveal the police investigation
was half-hearted
and disastrously slow one very senior
former police officer told me
it was negligent and so far the
attackers have evaded justice
niet farah grew up in cardiff but has
lived in london for the past 13 years
she works for the charity that helps
ex-prisoners she loves to run in her
spare time
on the 21st of december last year she
was out with two friends
it was getting late so nia's friends
decided to stay the night at her flat in
kilburn
all three women are of somali descent
they decided to go to this 24-hour
convenience store for some snacks to
take home
one of nyad's friends is swedish and was
talking to a friend on the phone
in swedish we've agreed to protect her
identity
so we'll call her iman there was two
girls in the shop
and i was talking to my friend in
swedish
and the girl said talk english
i wasn't thinking anything of it but she
was standing before us
in in the queue and
she's starting making comments i
remember there was two
two girls and one of them said to my
friend
this is f in england speak f in english
iman left the shop leaving her two
friends inside
one of the girl came out and punched me
in my face
she punched you in the face as nyet went
to help her friend
she heard shouts from the other side of
the road
she says a group of seven white men had
emerged from a parked van
and were approaching
nyad wanted to show me what happened
next from the safety
of my car when they crossed the road and
they got out the van
i was punched inside of my head there so
they punched me and i fell on the floor
right where the vegetables were
and then i'm just trying to catch my
breath
and then my friend was on the floor
there in front of me
and she was being beat up so i got up
tried to comfort her
and then they dragged me into the
doorway
it's incredibly raw for you obviously i
think
we should probably drive off
niad says the van was dark coloured with
a sliding door on the side and the man
leading the other six had bawled his
fist
and was shouting racist abuse at her
he's just like he had his fist like this
like
and he was like
and i remember i just took my arm off my
friend and i was just like
what and then the other one came the one
that was very smartly dressed he was
behind him
and then he punched me there
and i remember i fell on the floor
all three women were being punched
[Music]
nied was kicked unconscious all seven of
them was around
us and then i remember the one with
uh that was smartly dressed with a black
jacket
he pulled me to a doorway
that was a doorway next to the shop next
to the shop yeah
he pulled me in the doorway and then he
was
he was stamping on me and then i was
doing this
and then and you were on the floor i was
on the floor in that doorway
and all i did was i was like at that
point i thought
i'm dead i'm gonna be dead and then i
did this
and then i can see through like here and
there that i was being kicked
i remember there was four different
types of shoes
because when they were kicking me i can
see
the shoes that were hitting me and then
one of them held the railing
and i was like being stamped on
and then there was kicks coming every
angle of my body
and i was just curled up on the floor
like that
i remember one of them came to kicking
me further
and he was saying oh they're not these
are not p
these are not these are
so yeah that's um those were the words
that i i clearly remember yeah
the only thing i could see when i stood
up was her eyes was rolling
back so you saw her eyes roll back in
her head and she was being dragged into
the doorway of a shop
and still being kicked when they dragged
her yeah to that place they dragged her
from one place the next place to still
kick her
what did you think about that did you
feel gonna die i was punched inside of
my head there
bob quick has 32 years experience of
dealing with violent crime
he was head of specialist operations at
the met and before that
chief constable of surrey police and
then my friend was on the floor there
this was an attack of extreme violence
this is indicative of people who are a
public menace
and need to be identified and brought to
justice
an incident of this nature could quite
legitimately have been described a
critical incident
it had potential to really impact on
community confidence
it was a serious crime in its own right
and it was
compounded by racial motivation the
evidence of which is clear
i remember that i looked in the mirror
in my bathroom
and there was all blood pouring down my
face i had it all over my
my coat my hands were all full of blood
and then i was look i was doing this to
my head
and i remember i as i was doing that i
put my finger in a hole
and this is my finger about that much
went into my head
and um and then i realized
that i had a hole in my head
her friends had called 999 two
constables responded to the call
after 40 minutes waiting for an
ambulance nia says she persuaded the
policeman to take her to hospital
nyad's head wound was sealed and she had
a scan was put on opioid pain relief
and then i woke up and there was two
police officers next to me and my
two friends she says one of the officers
started to question her about what had
happened was you buying anything off
them
and i was like no is he implying that
you were trying to buy drugs
he was literally just implying that we
knew the guys
that we were buying stuff off them um
that it was almost impossible for the
racist attack to happen in that area
and it was the repetition of the
questions
it was i felt like i was being
interrogated
by their account that does imply
the officers at the scene were working
on some sort of assumption that they
either knew
uh the perpetrators or were in some way
engaging with them maybe buying drugs
or whatever if that's true
then that's inexcusable the police
absolutely have a duty to be objective
and not to jump to conclusions so did
racist assumptions
undermine the police investigation the
women say they did
the met denies the claim we can't be
sure if wrong assumptions
hampered the investigation but what we
do know
is that it was fatally flawed by a
series of basic mistakes after this
the response seems to have been pretty
woeful
you would have expected this to be
prioritized
immediately by the senior officer on
duty and
for standard operating procedures to
apply
and that would mean officers at the
scene
freezing the scene so that a scene
management
exercise can be undertaken for searching
for any forensic clues
who knows what may have been dropped by
a suspect for all we know one of the
suspects
may have had an injury and left blood at
the scene
it's essential to act fast in a criminal
investigation to preserve evidence
this is known as the golden hour
it's a very busy high street there would
have been
lots of opportunities to recover cctv
imagery which may have identified
some of the perpetrators or the vehicle
that was described by the witnesses
and the victims that the suspects made
off on
so there were lots of opportunities
really to solve this crime and it's not
clear to me that they were taken
on the 13th of january i came here down
kilburn lane looking for cctv evidence
it's what the police should have been
doing before christmas i found this
camera here attached to the green
grocery shop overlooking the attack
location
now if the police had come before
christmas they could have got vital
evidence
because this camera might have caught
the men crossing the road
and attacking the three women
no effort was made to recover cctv from
neighboring shops
until the new year and by then the
footage had been recycled
overwritten by new material
and it's unclear if there was any
investigation into whether there were
links between the original two women
and the men in the van and the van
itself
was not traced near says she had to
chase the police to make a statement
after one officer told her it would not
be necessary
he said to me oh we have no evidence
no cctv camera absolutely
like no line of inquiry so therefore
we can't take no statements off you
so basically there's nothing that we can
do for you at all
that is extraordinary though because the
statements from you and your friends
that would have been crucial evidence
yeah absolutely
after he had insisted the police did
take a statement
but not until two months after the
attack
no statements have ever been taken from
her two friends
the two pcs who'd first attended the
crime scene
said they passed the case over to
westminster cid in december
and it was cid that decided not to
pursue it
they said we left it for them when we
went off for christmas
and they've left us
details to basically say that it wasn't
going to be
a cid case because my injuries weren't
severe enough so they passed it back to
us
so i said to him so i asked him a
question i said so what injuries do i
need to sustain
for for it to be taken seriously i said
do i have to be dead we asked the
metropolitan police about the women's
allegation
that they've been racially profiled as
black women
on a night out buying drugs the met told
us
this line of questioning should not be
considered as an officer making any
assumptions or doubting the account
given by a victim
and we refute any suggestion that this
is what happened in this case
our officers always keep an open mind as
to the circumstances of any attack
and must build an understanding of the
facts from a very early stage
this was treated as a serious racially
aggravated assault
committed by people unknown to the
victims
we also put our questions about missed
opportunities to the met
in an extraordinary admission a
spokesman told us that the attack could
have qualified
as a critical incident and mistakes were
made
we accept that this particular incident
should have been escalated and
prioritized at an earlier stage
there was a delay in the necessary
follow-up inquiries being made
just after the incident and this
hindered the subsequent investigation
this shouldn't have happened and we are
sorry for letting the victims in this
case down
this was an appalling attack which
should have been investigated with
greater urgency
for nia the last 10 months have been
deeply traumatic
and she still can't bear to return home
for now it seems her racist attackers
have got away with it
i have zero trust in the police now
and they didn't help me when i was most
at need
i've had to live with the trauma of not
knowing that i'm never going to get
justice
because of their incompetence and them
just not taking
my case serious the perpetrators of this
crime you know clearly represent a
danger to the public if they're prepared
to use that type of violence and if they
are
particularly motivated by race
so i i i would have expected
significant resources to be allocated to
this investigation
and for a determined search and
a determined pursuit of all the
available leads
in response to newsline's investigation
the metropolitan police
admitted it failed nyad and her two
friends
the case is being reopened with a senior
detective in charge
but the police now say mistakes and
delays were so serious
there's no guarantee of justice
and 10 months on from the attack the
gang of violent
racist men are still free