Prayers said on anniversary of mystery death

Amemorial gathering has been held for an Ethiopian man whose mysterious death in London 33 years ago sparked an ongoing campaign for justice.

Mogous Abay was found in the courtyard below his fourth flat on June 30, 1990 after police said he had jumped to his death. His brother Alem Abay disputes this, saying the police investigation was flawed and ignored the possibility that he was a murder victim.

“We hope this evening just for a short while to focus our minds and hearts on the life of Mogous, to speak about two things, about justice for him and about hope for him and for us,” said Father Christopher Cawrse of Holy Cross Church in King’s Cross, who led the prayers.

As part of his campaign to discover the true circumstances surrounding the tragedy, Abay enlisted the church’s help 16 years ago. “Alem wanted to begin this whole motion of trying to get justice for his late brother,” said Fr Cawrse. “Slowly he got a group together to start addressing the issues of his brother’s death and of the perceived injustice of the way the police treated the case.”

He added: “This is familiar to me, the atmosphere it creates, as I lived very close to where [racist murder victim] Stephen Lawrence was killed only two years after Mogous died.”

Standing next to a photograph of his brother, Abay told the gathering that, despite the passage of time, he was determined more than ever to see justice done. “I have survived,” he said. “God has given me the strength to continue the fight and they cannot take that power away from me.”

His Justice for Mogous campaign led to a petition of almost 12,000 signatures presented to 10 Downing Street (seat of the UK government) in 2017. Two years ago, London’s governing body, the Greater London Authority, opened an inquiry into the police’s handling of the case.

Mogous followed his older brother Alem to London in 1979 as a teenager. The two hailed from Tigray province, where their involvement with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front forced them to flee to Sudan before seeking asylum in the UK.

They joined a community of Tigrayan and Eritrean exiles living in the King’s Cross and Bloomsbury area of central London. Mogous found work as an assistant librarian at the School of African and Oriental Studies while studying for a science degree at the City of London Polytechnic, but became home sick and was eventually treated for depression.

His body was found by a neighbour outside the flats near Tottenham Court Road in central London. Two other residents and the caretaker of the block were the first to attend the scene before the arrival of paramedics and the police. However, the only witnesses called to give evidence at the subsequent Coroner’s inquest were three police officers and a pathologist. The hearing, which concluded with an open verdict, was over in less than 15 minutes.

In 1993 Abay decided to challenge the verdict by applying for a judicial review for the inquest to be re-opened. At the time, his lawyer Lincoln Crawford noted the lack of several key witnesses, including a neighbour and the caretaker who in separate statements said there had been no sign of blood around the deceased’s body, contradicting the police who told the inquest there had been.

Additionally, police failed to take any fingerprints from the window from which Mogous, 27, was said to have jumped, and eliminated another important line of inquiry by destroying his clothing. There were also inconsistencies of evidence between the pathologist and the doctor who certified Mogous’ death.

“There is a real possibility that a different verdict would be returned if there were a proper inquiry into the deceased’s death,” said Crawford as part of his written advice. However, financial support under the government’s legal aid scheme to pursue the case was withdrawn and Abay was unable to proceed.