THE family of Sheku Bayoh faced an “inequality of arms” and “institutional racism” as they took on the police and prosecutors to seek truth and justice, according to their solicitor Aamer Anwar today.
Mr Anwar made the remarks as he gave evidence at the inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr Bayoh and the role racism played in it.
Mr Bayoh, dubbed “Scotland’s George Floyd,” died in Kirkcaldy on May 3 2015 of asphyxiation after being pepper-sprayed, beaten to the ground, and then bound beneath six police officers.
The inquiry began in 2022, a seven-year wait Mr Anwar argued only demonstrated the “inequality of arms” in the whole process.
“When somebody dies in police custody or in prison custody, often what happens is the family is told not to worry,” he said.
“Depending on the background of the family, if they’re middle class, they will ask questions.
“If people are poor, if they’re vulnerable, they don’t know what to ask, so it leaves those authorities to investigate themselves.
“In my experience of nearly 25 years, all the families that we have represented have been left frustrated, angered and upset because they feel they have been betrayed, lied to, and denied accountability and transparency as the state covers up for itself.
“You have to fight and fight for every piece of paper and every disclosure of information and that is an inequality of arms because the state has an army of lawyers funded at the public purse.
“The family is not entitled to that because they're told, trust in the state.”
Mr Anwar also spoke of his initial reluctance to discuss the role of race in Mr Bayoh’s death publicly, despite general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation Calum Steele claiming the “early inference that he was presenting was that police officers had killed Mr Bayoh because of the colour of his skin.”
Commenting on Mr Steele’s statement, Mr Anwar told the inquiry: “Calum Steele is 100 per cent wrong and this shows the institutional racism of the Scottish Police Federation that couldn’t see beyond my colour.
“They persisted with that argument not just amongst their colleagues but publicly by issuing circular which put me in the firing line because every police officer in the country thought Aamer Anwar is playing the race card when I was doing the exact opposite.”
The inquiry, before Lord Bracadale, continues.
