On the evening of Thursday 11 July 2013 a 24-year-old man called Lee James was playing with his daughters while swigging from a can of beer on a green in front of the flats where he lived in Capgrave Crescent, close to the river Avon in south-east Bristol.

Bijan Ebrahimi, a disabled refugee originally from Iran, picked up his camera and began to film his neighbour drinking. Ebrahimi wanted to be rehoused because he had fallen out with a number of neighbours and was keen to record examples of, as he saw it, antisocial behaviour.

Bijan Ebrahimi murder: family accuse police of institutional racism Read more

But in James’s eyes, Ebrahimi was taking pictures of his daughters because he was sexually interested in them and, enraged, he barged his way into Ebrahimi’s ground-floor flat, yelling: “I’m going to fuck you up.” Ebrahimi, who was still filming, captured the violent encounter on his phone. It ended when James’s partner, Charlene Husher, pulled him away.

At 8.15pm Ebrahimi dialled 999, telling the operator James had assaulted him and there was a “racial problem”. The call was logged as a “hate crime” and categorised as a “grade one” incident meaning an immediate response was needed.

The police response was speedy. By 8.35pm two constables, Leanne Winter and Helen Harris, were at Ebrahimi’s flat. Ebrahimi told them James had headbutted him but the officers were sceptical.

They went to speak to James’s partner, who said she thought Ebrahimi was a paedophile and she was scared for her children. James was unapologetic. He told Winter he would take the law into his own hands and “do time” to protect his children. Winter later reported that James was “frothing at the mouth”. Harris would say she thought it was “hot air”. “It just sounded to me as if he was letting off steam,” she said.

Rather than arresting James, Winter and Harris arrested Ebrahimi for breach of the peace. “I can’t believe you are arresting me when I haven’t done anything,” he told the officers. As he was led away handcuffed, neighbours came out, cheering and chanting: “Paedophile.” Someone was heard to say: “Firebomb.”

At Brislington police station, Ebrahimi appeared confused as he was booked in.

He was taken to a holding cell, where security camera footage shows him trying to talk to Harris. At one point he says: “I’m talking to you as a friend.” Harris replies: “No, you’re not my friend. That’s the point. I’m a police officer and you’re a pain in the ass. Don’t speak to me.”

Next morning, Friday 12 July, a sergeant who had been on duty that night – but was not on trial – handed over to a colleague, telling him: “The pitchfork and torch-burning brigade are after him.”



But Ebrahimi was released from custody and allowed to return home. In a Storm log – a record of the incident – an officer wrote: “Neighbours are convinced neighbour is RSO [repeat sex offender]. Male is returning back to property. Concerns [there] may be retribution, tension may be high.”

During the course of the day Ebrahimi made 12 calls to the police trying to get the local beat manager, PC Kevin Duffy, to visit him. In one call he told an operator: “I can’t even open my window because all the time they are laughing at me and they are, you know, telling something nasty to me.” The operator asked: “What are they saying?” Ebrahimi replied: “You’re a paedophile.”

On another occasion he told an operator: “I’ve got a mob outside my door.” And in a third he pleaded: “My life is in danger. Could you please come?”

Duffy did not go. Instead he told an operator: “I’ve no intentions of taking any calls from Bijan Ebrahimi ... I will speak to him at my convenience.”

He did task a community support officer, Andrew Passmore, to patrol Capgrave Crescent. Passmore was later to claim he had patrolled for an hour on foot and in a car. The prosecution alleged that in fact he had only driven up and down for two or three minutes.

On Saturday 13 July Ebrahimi continued to try to contact the police by phone and email. The final call came at 12.12am on Sunday 14 July. An operator told Winter that Ebrahimi was on the line. Winter told the operator that Ebrahimi was a “pest” and an “idiot” and said: “I’m absolutely not interested in speaking to him ever, thanks.”

About 50 minutes later James attacked Ebrahimi outside his flat. James punched and kicked Ebrahimi until he lost consciousness and, with the help of another man, set fire to his body.

James was subsequently jailed for life for Ebrahimi’s murder. But the Independent Police Complaints Commission was also investigating how officers had handled the case.

Duffy, in particular, had had many dealings with the murder victim going back to 2007 when a woman claimed Ebrahimi had harassed her. Duffy arrested Ebrahimi and he was warned about his alleged behaviour. He next encountered Ebrahimi in June 2009 after he told police he had been attacked in a racially aggravated assault outside a pub.

Ebrahimi said he had been pushed against a wall and punched, with one of the attackers telling him: “We’re English, we’re special. You’re not special, you’re foreign.” The claims were investigated but no evidence could be found and Ebrahimi withdrew the complaint. He told police it would “make things worse” if he pursued it.

Later that summer, Ebrahimi told police he was racially abused in a shop. Again, police investigated the incident but witnesses contradicted his version of events.

There were many other contacts between Ebrahimi and the police. In a police log at that time, Ebrahimi was described as having an “antagonistic and troublemaking” approach. In a note from the hate crime unit, officers were advised to always work in pairs with Ebrahimi when they had dealings with him. The prosecution claimed that the way Duffy, Winter and Harris dealt with Ebrahimi was informed by antipathy towards him.

It alleged the officers had not simply acted incompetently or even negligently but had fallen so far short of what is expected of a public officer that their actions had been criminal.

Following a five-week trial a jury acquitted the officers who had arrested Ebrahimi – Harris and Winter – of misconduct in a public office. Duffy and Passmore were each convicted of one count of the same offence. Passmore was convicted not in relation to what he did on the patrol, but over what he said to murder detectives about it later.

No matter the result of the trial, the case does not end here for the Avon and Somerset constabulary. The criminal aspect of it has run its course but a string of disciplinary hearings involving as many as 20 officers and staff will now take place.