UK Police admits wrongfully execution

AFTER 70 YEARS UK POLICE HAVE ADMITTED THEY WRONGLY EXECUTED A BLACK MAN

- By Omar Mohammed

Mohmood Mattan was born in 1922 in the then British Somaliland, Somalia’s breakaway northern region currently known as Somaliland. Mattan got a job on a ship and in the year 1947 met and married Rhonda Valley who was 17 years old in England. A time when interracial marriage was not common, the beginning of their lives together in the UK was not easy one. They found it difficult finding a place where they can live together with their kids. Susbsequently, the couple were forced to live in different houses in one area. On the night of March 6th, 1952, just five years after the new couple got married and had three sons, Lilly Volpert a local shop owner was murdered in her store in the Docks area, not far from where Mattan and his family lived. Hours later, the police forces have arrested Mr Mattan linking him with the murder. Mattan who spoke very basic English, and the fact that he wasn’t given an interpreter, he ended up not being able to defend himself enough. However, the police arrested and continued to have sentenced him for the murder. This happened when no evidence police have gathered from his house after the search presented, and no forensic testimony produced throughout the court period, that would support the police claim. According to sources, there were conflicting statements Photo source: BBC taken from eyewitnesses including the last two customers of victims’ shop, who initially couldn’t recall Mattan while the killing was happening but later changed their narrative in the court. Police have not shown any of these conflicting accounts to the all-white jury. Though the government’s home office department have accepted miscarriage of justice and provided financial compensations to the family. Police in this case have never admitted such flawed and wrongful conviction up until this year 2022, 70 years after Mohmood Mattan was unlawfully sentenced to death. Mattan’s wife Mrs Tanya Mattan and their three sons have all campaigned justice for him and that his names cleared for decades, but sadly all have passed away before this year’s police apology. South Wales police chief said “it is right the proper an apology is made on behalf of policing for what went so badly wrong in this case 70 years ago and for the terrible suffering of Mr Mattan’s family and all those affected by this tragedy for many years. However, for the Mattan’s family, the apology is too late and in fact insincere. Activists question, why did it the police force take all those decades for the polices to establish share these facts, which they probably had before, and provide apology, while the victims immediate family were still alive campaigning very hard to clear his name.