Exclusive: New claims come on 25th anniversary of death of Jay Abatan, who was assaulted in Brighton in 1999
Officers in a police force that bungled the investigation into a suspected racist killing, allegedly went on holiday, dined and partied with suspects arrested over the attack, the Guardian has learned.
The new claims come on the 25th anniversary of the death of Jay Abatan, 42, who was attacked outside a Brighton nightclub in January 1999.
No one has been convicted for the fatal attack on Jay or the assault immediately afterwards on his brother, Michael. Both were set upon by a group of white men as they left the Ocean Rooms nightclub.
Sussex police, which investigated the death of Abatan, who was mixed race, made a string of errors, revealed by hundreds of internal police documents seen by the Guardian.
The documents show that witnesses and forensic opportunities missed, that police used racist terms such as “half-caste” and “coloured”, that officers failed to treat the death seriously enough, and that the investigation was under-resourced.
An inquest ruled the incident an unlawful and unprovoked killing and said no convictions ensued despite suspects being identified quickly by Sussex officers committed to getting justice.
Michael Abatan said a new force should take over the investigation and a public inquiry was needed: “I just want the truth and I am sick of being lied to and treated like a fool. I trusted the authorities to do their job and they let Jay down.”
Jay, a tax accountant, was attacked and fractured his skull after falling and died five days later, the inquest found.
Michael claims that before the group containing the attackers reached the club, they had been drinking with a police officer. Inside the Ocean Rooms, Michael said, there was tension after Jay danced with a white woman who was part of the group containing the attackers.
The violence started when Jay’s group left the nightclub to get a taxi.
A postmortem found that Jay suffered facial grazes, a fractured eye socket, another wound to his mouth, and that the back of his skull was fractured when he fell and his head hit on concrete.
Michael said he saw his brother plummeting backwards and then at least two attackers turned on him, punching and kicking him to the ground for 15 seconds.
