A teenager considered such an inspiring youth leader who was invited to address MPs is among the 10 young black men who have been jailed after being convicted of criminal offenses in Preston Crown Court.
But the convictions have caused a great deal of controversy, with racial justice activists saying the 10 were found “guilty of association.”
The case has sparked a protest march and a campaign that has led more than 500 people to offer counseling, therapy and tutoring to convicts.
Ademola Adedeji, 19, and three friends from Moston, north of Manchester, were sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm. They were jailed for participating in a private group chat on the Telegram messaging app a few days after the murder of one of their friends.
Kids of Color, a juvenile justice organization that organized the march and offered mentoring, said the case showed evidence of “thought surveillance.”
He said innocent young people had been criminalized for sending immature messages in the midst of pain, messages that were misinterpreted as evidence of violent intentions.
Most of the 10 young people attended the same school in Moston. They were convicted of plotting a violent revenge for the murder of their friend: an aspiring 16-year-old rapper named Alexander John Soyoye, who played mock music under the name “MD.”
Alexander John Soyoye was an aspiring rapper who played mock music under the name “MD”. Photography: Family brochure / PA
None of the so-called targets in the Telegram chat were injured, although three of the defendants violently attacked two other boys using machetes and a car as a weapon.
Condemning them on Friday, the judge, Mr Justice Goose, said the case involved two rival gangs, Moston’s M40 and Rochdale and Oldham’s RTD gang.
“It was played on social media and through rap music, with threats of violence, display of weapons, including firearms, machetes and crossbows. Entering the territory on the one hand was treated as a provocation, which had to deal with violence or the threat of violence, ”he said.
Defendants denied being part of a gang, insisting that M40 was a drill music collective in which some of them raped. The jury showed YouTube videos of some of the teenagers shaving and posing in Moston with their faces covered.
Four of the defendants had nothing to do with the M40 music group, beyond having seen one or two of their videos.
Among them was Adedeji, who was described by his youth worker as “a truly exceptional young man.” He was the headmaster of his school and had produced a book that inspired the young blacks of Moston.
The book, called Something to Say, sparked his invitation to parliament in 2019, when he was 16 years old. He received an unconditional offer to study law at the University of Birmingham, received while on bail.
Adedeji’s coach on the Salford Red Devils youth rugby league team said he was “the kind of star student we are looking for to get into the big leagues and with luck in the English national team”. On weekends, the teenager was a caregiver for people with dementia.
His best friend, Raymond Savi, also 19, came from “the most loving family one can expect,” his lawyers said. He had honors in his studies and a place at Salford University to study accounting.
Another of his friends, 19-year-old Azim Okunola, was about to finish his degree in computer science and artificial intelligence with first-class honors when he was convicted, after completing the course in two years in accounts of three.
Another friend, 19-year-old Omolade Okoya, was studying public services at the university, hoping to one day work for the police, ambulance or fire department.
None of these four will achieve their ambitions soon. The public gallery was full of friends and family crying as eight-year sentences were handed down, with the father of a child shouting, “Racists!”
Adedeji, Savi, Okunola and Okoya were convicted based on a series of messages posted in a group chat called “MDs World”. [crying emoji]”In a few hours on November 8, 2020, three days after Soyoye was assassinated.
None of the four had weapons, nor did they engage in violent acts or “outreach missions” to locate individuals who were to be the target of the violence.
However, a jury found them guilty of participating in a three-month conspiracy that included at least two violent attacks by other defendants. The prosecution said its role in the conspiracy was to identify who was to be attacked and obtain information about his whereabouts.
Telegram’s incriminating chat was created by another defendant, Harry Oni, shortly after Soyoye was stabbed to death by members of the RTD gang. Oni and three other defendants, Brooklyn Jitobah, Martin Junior Thomas and Simon Thorne, were there when Soyoye was killed.
They took part in a street fight with 13 young people from the RTD gang with machetes and metal pipes, but fled, leaving Soyoye to die alone. He had been stabbed 15 times, including in the perineum.
The prosecution said it was the “guilt and shame” of knowing they had fled and let Soyoye die that prompted them to seek violent revenge.
School ties are left in homage to the scene where Alexander John Soyoye, 16, was stabbed to death in November 2020. Photo: Christopher Furlong / Getty
Prosecutors said the Telegram chat showed the 10 conspired to take revenge, choosing targets.
Adedeji has contributed 11 of the 345 chat messages. One saw him pass the zip code of one of Soyoye’s killers. They were never attacked, but were eventually convicted of Soyoye’s murder.
Savi also wrote 11 of the 345 messages, participating in the chat for 14 minutes. In a post, he suggested “taking a nap” (kidnapping) the cousin of one of Soyoye’s killers and removing his phone so he couldn’t contact other people.
Savi’s defense was that he was not making serious suggestions and that he had no idea that any real violence could occur as a result. In this case, 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.
Roxy Legane, the director of Kids of Color, said the case was the latest in a series of trials that had seen large groups of often black boys imprisoned by those they know.
“This is a case of association guilt because, once again, the damages of a small minority have spilled over into a much wider network for prosecution,” he said.
“For these 10 boys, what has been manipulated to bring them closer and draw broader conclusions about what it means to know each other, whether at school or at church, is that they get to know each other.
“Their associations become evidence of guilt. Shared schools, friendships on social media, musical interests, messaging groups and, of course, sharing being black have been used to frame them as a criminal gang.”
He said the private messages used to reinforce a gang narrative were in fact “thoughtless, immature and emotional messages” that “became criminals, became intentions: it looks like a police of thought.”
The case was tried under conspiracy law, which came into force long before the era of mobile phones and social media. It has similarities to crimes prosecuted as a “joint venture,” a common law doctrine in which an individual can be jointly convicted of another’s crime, if the court decides that it provided that the other party could commit that crime.
But the judge stressed: “The defendants were not in a joint venture; they were each of the main parties playing a full role in committing the crime of a criminal conspiracy, either to kill others or to intentionally cause them serious bodily harm. “