Lucy Powell, who is Labour & Co-op MP for Manchester Central, asked if the defendants in Yousef Makki’s murder trial would have been acquitted if they had ‘been black
The parents of a 17-year-old schoolboy have praised an MP for questioning the verdict after two public schoolboys were cleared over his killing.
In a message posted online on Saturday, Lucy Powell suggested not guilty verdicts over the killing of Yousef Makki may be linked to racism, class prejudice and inequality.
She queried whether they would have been the same if the defendants were ‘black, at state school and from, say, Moss Side’.
The 17-year-old Manchester Grammar School pupil was stabbed to death in the affluent Cheshire village of Hale Barns. The jury heard he was among three teenage boys armed with knives posing as ‘middle-class gangsters’ and died in a row over an attempt to rob a drug dealer.
An MP has questioned whether prejudice lay behind a jury’s decision to clear a public schoolboy of murdering his friend.
Lucy Powell last night suggested not guilty verdicts over the killing of Yousef Makki may be linked to racism, class prejudice and inequality.
In a message posted online, she queried whether they would have been the same if the defendants were ‘black, at state school and from, say, Moss Side’.
The 17-year-old Manchester Grammar School pupil was stabbed to death in the affluent Cheshire village of Hale Barns. The jury heard he was among three teenage boys armed with knives posing as ‘middle-class gangsters’ and died in a row over an attempt to rob a drug dealer.
The family of Yousef want a retrial after one teenager was acquitted of murder and a second of conspiracy to rob last Friday. They are furious at how his memory was allegedly smeared by defence barristers.
Yousef, whose father is from Lebanon, was raised by his mother Debbie in Burnage, a deprived part of South Manchester, winning a scholarship to the £12,000-a-year school.
Mrs Makki – a drug and alcohol counsellor – last night welcomed the MP’s intervention but said their focus was on how Yousef had been portrayed to the jury. ‘What kind of image are they trying to portray?’ she asked. ‘That my kid was bad anyway because he was from a council estate? That wasn’t the case. Yousef was extremely clever, never in trouble.’
Mazen Akoum, husband of Yousef’s sister Jade, added: ‘We want a retrial, because we can’t understand what happened. And we think it’s not fair at all.’
Ms Powell responded to a tweet about the case said: ‘You do have to ask if these defendants were black, at state school and from, say, Moss Side whether they would have been acquitted’
Yousef Makki, 17, pictured, was stabbed to death in Hale Barns in March. On Friday two teenage defendants, boy A and boy B, both from wealthy Cheshire families, were cleared of all charges
Jurors at Manchester Crown Court took six hours to clear a 17-year-old, known as Boy A, of both the murder and manslaughter of Yousef. Boy A admitted conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, but the other teenager, Boy B, was cleared of this charge. Both admitted possessing knives. They will be sentenced on July 25.
Prosecutors accused Boy A of stabbing Yousef in a ‘petulant’ response to being beaten up during the bungled robbery. But Boy A claimed Yousef had pulled a knife on him and a video of the dead teenager speaking in gangster slang was shown in court.
Yousef’s father Ghaleb collapsed in court after the verdict, asking, ‘Where’s the justice? There’s no justice for my son.’
A petition arguing that Yousef did not receive justice has more than 7,000 signatures.
In response to the verdicts, Mrs Powell wrote on Twitter: ‘You do have to ask if these defendants were black, at state school and from, say, Moss Side whether they would have been acquitted.’
Jack Harrison, a barrister who met Yousef through a law project, agreed, saying he found it ‘difficult not to think that the outcome would have been very different for Boy A and Boy B had they been poor, non-white from a council estate instead of rich kids’.
Several people responded and agreed that the outcome could have been different if the two defendants had been black
But Miss Powell faced criticism from solicitor Alex Preston ‘It’s really unwise to use this case as some sort of example of very real issues to do with race and criminal justice when you didn’t hear any of the evidence,’ he said.
One anti-violence campaigner also said she is wrong to focus on skin colour. Nick Buckley, of charity Mancunian Way, said: ‘This plays into people’s belief of state racism and promotes victimhood.’
The parents of Boy A backed the verdict but added: ‘Yousef’s death was a tragedy and our son will have to live with the responsibility of his role for the rest of his life.’
Twitter users backed the MP’s decision to question whether the ruling was an example of prejudice.
One person said: ‘Nope if they were black they would of been named in media given long long sentences and black on black crime would if been brought up.
‘As it stand lesson to be learnt from this is class and poverty affect your sentence.’
While another said ‘exactly what I thought Lucy. My thoughts exactly’ and someone else agreed adding ‘my thoughts exactly. They would be going down.’
Another person also added: ‘Asked exactly the same question tonight over dinner They were both carrying knives FFS.’
And someone else replied to the tweet praising the MP for mentioning the case on her Twitter account by writing: ‘Well done on speaking out Lucy.’
Others said they agreed with the ‘state school aspect’ of Ms Powell’s tweet on Saturday
However others said the MP might have a different opinion if she had sat through the trial
However, others disagreed and said her opinion might be different if she had sat through the court case and said the MP shouldn’t use the case to make a point about race.
They said: ‘It’s really unwise to use this case as some sort of example of very real issues to do with race and criminal justice when you didn’t actually hear any of the evidence at all. If you had sat through the trial of course it’d be different.’
During the four-week trial the court heard how Boy B had bought the knives online using a false name and had them posted from China to a friend’s address.
Officers later found a dark coloured ‘flick knife’ behind a low boundary wall near the scene of the killing plus a silver coloured lock knife in some bushes and recovered a second flick knife from down a grid.
The stabbing was an ‘accident waiting to happen’ as all three indulged in ‘idiotic fantasies’ playing middle class gangsters, the jury heard.
Despite the privileged backgrounds of both defendants, they led ‘double lives’.
Calling each other ‘Bro’ and ‘Fam’ and the police ‘Feds’, the defendants and Yousef smoked cannabis, road around on bikes, ‘chilling’ and listened to rap or drill music.
They would post videos on social media, making threats and posing with ‘shanks’ or knives.
The court heard how hours before the stabbing, Boy B arranged a £45 cannabis deal and the teenagers planned to rob the drug dealer, a ‘soft target’.
During the trial the court heard how hours before the stabbing, Boy B arranged a £45 cannabis deal and the teenagers planned to rob the drug dealer, a ‘soft target’. Pictured is Yousef Makki
Yousef’s mother Deborah Makki, a psychiatric nurse, planted a tree in his memory on the grounds of his school in Manchester earlier this year
But the robbery went wrong and Yousef and Boy B fled, leaving Boy A to take a beating.
Boy A then later pushed Yousef who called him a ‘p****’ and punched him in the face.
He told the jury Yousef pulled out a knife and he responded by also taking out a knife and his victim was accidentally stabbed.
Boy A broke down in tears telling the jury: ‘I got more annoyed. I [took] it out straight away, I don’t really know what I did, kind of lifted my arm up. I didn’t realise anything had happened at first.’
As the victim lay dying, the panicking defendants hid the knives in bushes and down a drain, dialled 999 and tried to staunch the blood pouring out of Yousef’s chest wound.
A passing heart surgeon performed emergency surgery in the back of an ambulance but Yousef suffered catastrophic blood loss.
They told police, who had scrambled to the scene, that they had found Yousef stabbed and suggested others were responsible.